Diagnosing the diabetes mellitus by tasting patients urine

Question

In prehistoric Greece the father of Medicine, Hypocrates, explained a method of diagnosing the diabetes mellitus by tasting patient's urine. Describe the physiological description for this archaic method?

Answer 1

Beneath normal conditions, the glucose filtered by renal glomeruli is nearly totally resorbed in the nephron tubules and not excreted in urine. With the eminent glucose blood level, the renal tubules can’t resorb all the filtered glucose and certain quantity of the substance emerges in the urine. This quantity is sufficient to give the sweet taste which helped Hypocrates to diagnose diabetes and to distinguish it from other diseases accompanied by the polyuria. These days the technique is inconceivable due to the danger of contamination of tester by disease agents possibly existed in the patient's urine.