Urinalysis

“The urinalysis may have started as a diagnostic test, but between 1900 and 1925 it also became a way of documenting and understanding a person’s changing clinical course. . . . It was the first fairly common test that involved taking a part of the living patient away, going into the laboratory, and studying that specimen with microscopes and test tubes. Moreover, the urinalysis was multidimensional: it provided a variety of results, including those related to color, appearance, and albumin, among others. [The urinalysis] appears to have been the first [technology-based tool] to be used in a systematic attempt to follow patients over time” (Howell VI, 93) . . . . Specifically, urinalysis served as a model for the continuous monitoring of patients and as a substrate for the application of routinized, standardized procedures to medical examinations. From 1900 to 1925, this very old test helped physicians become familiar with the idea of doing multiple, systematic, standardized tests on their patients” (102).