Anatomy def: The act of tasting or the faculty of taste – accomplished by taste buds aided by olfactory (smell) receptor neurons.
Outlander def: Using taste buds to detect sugar in the urine – no other reliable test at the time, ye ken? Preferable to sampling Comte St. Germain’s poison!
Learn about gustation, taste, and tastebuds in Anatomy Lesson #44, “Terrific Tunnel – GI System, Part 1.” Ubiquitous fellows, tastebuds aren’t confined to the tongue’s upper surface; they also reside on soft palate, inner cheek, epiglottis, and upper esophagus!
Read about Claire’s unique use of gustation in Diana’s splendid second big book: Dragonfly in Amber:
I bent over a pallet at the edge of the floor. A very thin woman lay listlessly under a single blanket, her eyes drifting dully over us without interest… It wasn’t the woman who had attracted my attention, so much as the oddly shaped glass vessel standing on the floor alongside her pallet. The vessel was brimming with a yellow fluid—urine, undoubtedly. I was mildly surprised; without chemical tests, or even litmus paper, what conceivable use could a urine sample be? Thinking over the various things one tested urine for, though, I had an idea. I picked up the vessel carefully… I sniffed carefully. Sure enough; half-obscured by sour ammoniac fumes, the fluid smelled sickly sweet—rather like soured honey. I hesitated, but there was only one way to make sure. With a moue of distaste, I gingerly dipped the tip of one finger into the liquid and touched it delicately to my tongue. … She has—” Drat. What would they have called it now? “She has … um, sugar sickness
Beginning in 1674, western physicians routinely tasted patient’s urine when diabetes mellitus was suspect. English physician Thomas Willis (1621-1675) was the first in modern medical literature to observe the relationship. Above and beyond the call of duty!
See Claire sample a patient’s urine and correctly diagnose her sugar sickness in Starz episode 203, Useful Occupations and Deceptions! Claire, lass, best rush home to share your day of lancing boils, treating scrofula, and tasting urine! Your hubby will be a glad-lad. Hah!
A deeply grateful,
Outlander Anatomist
Well it would have been reasonably clean.
Hi Frances.Do you mean the urine sample would have been reasonably clean? Well, that depends on how long it had sat around unrefrigerated. Urine inside a healthy body is basically sterile but a stew of chemicals including urea, salts, various metabolites, but nothing horrific. Urine after it has been urinated is contaminated with bacteria. And, women’s urine is more contaminated than men’s given our urinary tract anatomy. The hospital staff would know nothing about the need for a clean catch or proper preservation because Louis Pasteur’s work on germ theory didn’t hit the scene for another 100 years and it would be almost another century before clean catch urine samples were introduced. Never-the-less, it was unlikely that her urine contained anything that would have hurt Claire so in that regard, it could be considered reasonably clean. Probably smelled no worse than the Liar’s Spring! Good to hear from you!