Canadian experts urge protection for children from escalating heat in schools and child care settings

Extreme heat events caused by climate change jeopardize children’s health and learning; 40+ organizations issue urgent call to action

Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment / Canadian Child Care Federation

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The physical risks of extreme heat include heat stroke, exhaustion, rashes, and other related illnesses that can strike quickly. In a call to action, Canadian experts say children are particularly vulnerable to these serious health hazards

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Credit: CPCHE

As Canadians face increasingly intense and frequent heat waves, health, education and legal experts are sounding the alarm on a growing crisis: extreme heat in schools and child care settings due to the escalating effects of climate change. 

Amid Government of Canada warnings of near record heat ahead in 2025, the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment (CPCHE) and the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) say Canada’s schools and child care facilities are ill-prepared and children are paying the price.  

Released in parallel by CPCHE and CELA are detailed analyses and a call for immediate, coordinated efforts to safeguard children’s health, well-being, and learning in schools and child care settings across the country. 

CPCHE’s summary of evidence and Collective Call for Action, signed by CPCHE and 40 partners and collaborators, including CELA, is complemented by twin CELA reports elaborating on the need for climate-resilient infrastructure.

“Experts nationwide representing a wide range of disciplines call on all levels of government to respond with urgency,” says CPCHE Executive Director Erica Phipps. “The climate crisis is already reshaping childhood in Canada. Whether children are learning in settings that nurture or harm them depends on decisions made today.”

 

“This isn’t just about comfort. It’s about protecting the health, safety, and future of every child in Canada.”

Children are especially at risk

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) predicts heat in 2025 will approach 2024 levels, the hottest on record. While models suggest 2025 may be slightly cooler than last year, it is virtually certain (>99% chance) to be hotter than every previous year.

The physical risks of extreme heat include heat stroke, exhaustion, rashes, and other related illnesses that can strike quickly. 

CPCHE’s nationwide Call for Action says children are particularly vulnerable to these serious health hazards because:

• A child’s body produces more heat during activity and has a lower capacity to cool down through sweating than an adult’s
• They dehydrate faster than adults, and
• Young children may struggle to communicate feelings of overheating, placing great responsibility on caregivers and educators.

Children with disabilities or chronic health issues such as asthma, heart conditions, kidney problems, and mental or physical disabilities are especially susceptible. Research shows that even temperatures not deemed "extreme" can drive up emergency room visits for kids.

Meanwhile, the impacts go beyond physical. Hot classrooms can impair attention, memory, and emotional regulation, making it harder for students to learn. Studies link elevated temperatures to irritability, poor sleep, absenteeism, and reduced academic performance. 

One U.S. study estimated that, without air conditioning, a 1°F (0.5°C) increase in temperature over a school year led to a 1% decline in learning. Another estimated a 4.5% reduction in student performance on a high school exam taken on a 32.2°C day relative to a 21.1°C day.

Heat deepens inequities

The CPCHE Collective Call for Action and CELA’s research underscore a troubling reality: extreme heat amplifies social inequities. 

“Children in under-resourced and under-served communities often live in areas with less green space, denser housing, and limited access to cooling at home or school,” says CELA Counsel Jacqueline Wilson. “Many attend schools without air conditioning or outdoor shade — conditions that turn already hot days into dangerous ones. Indigenous children, in particular, face additional layers of vulnerability due to systemic underfunding of infrastructure on First Nations lands, including education and child care facilities.” 

Without targeted investment, Canada risks leaving thousands of children in dangerously overheated classrooms and child care facilities, where the stakes are not just academic, but a matter of health, safety, and justice.

Overheated classrooms and playgrounds: A national problem

Communities all across Canada are seeing an increase in the number of extreme heat events. The number of days above 30°C is expected to double or triple in some parts of Canada by 2050 due to climate change.

CPCHE underlines that Canada’s educational infrastructure is lagging behind the changing climate, noting media reports that few schools in Quebec and Nova Scotia have air-conditioned classrooms. Similar reports suggest that less than a third of schools in Toronto have central air; in Winnipeg, dozens of facilities operate without any cooling systems at all.

Indoor temperatures during heat events can soar well beyond the recommended maximum for residential settings — of 26°C — an upper limit based on adult tolerances, not children's. Overheated classrooms may discourage school attendance, disrupting education and deny refuge to students whose homes also lack air conditioning.

Pavement and other artificial surfaces can trap heat in playgrounds and outdoor learning spaces, pushing surface temperatures to dangerous levels. In an Arizona study, school playgrounds were the hottest spots measured. Shade is too often a luxury — more available in affluent schools than in lower-income areas. The increasing use of artificial turf is eclipsing the heat resilience offered by grass and vegetation, while posing additional health risks associated with toxic chemicals and microplastics. 

The CELA reports stress that the crisis is especially acute in First Nations communities, where chronic underfunding has left housing, child care centres, and schools ill-equipped to withstand extreme weather. Indigenous children face disproportionate exposure to poor air quality, wildfire smoke, and extreme heat, raising serious environmental justice concerns. 

Blueprint for safer, cooler learning environments

CPCHE, CELA and partners lay out a detailed action plan to adapt Canada’s schools and child care settings to extreme heat. Central to the plan is adopting a maximum indoor temperature standard of 26°C. This threshold, they argue, must be supported with real investment—especially in under-resourced communities.

Key recommendations include:

• Mechanical cooling systems: Schools and child care centres must install or upgrade HVAC systems and ensure that indoor spaces can maintain a maximum temperature of 26 degrees Celsius, prioritizing low-energy and zero-carbon technologies like heat pumps.
• Building retrofits: Investments should go beyond cooling. Retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency—through improved insulation, cool roofing, and energy efficient ventilation—will also help reduce emissions and energy costs.
• Passive and behavioural measures: From window shading to turning off heat-generating electronics, simple strategies can help manage indoor temperatures. But schools and child care programs need guidance, training, and resources to implement them effectively.
• Greener outdoor spaces: More trees, natural ground cover, and shade structures are essential. CPCHE also recommends restricting dark pavement and banning the use of artificial turf due to its heat-trapping and environmental and health risks.
• Data collection and monitoring: Better data on indoor temperatures and impacts of heat on student health is needed to inform heat mitigation strategies. Temperature monitoring should be standard, and heat response plans must be in place and clearly communicated.

The CELA reports underline a finding by Statistics Canada that much of the country’s educational infrastructure is over 15 years old, with many facilities nearing the end of their usable lifespan. In Toronto, for example, the average public school is over 60 years old, and fewer than one-third have central air conditioning.

They also cite the Assembly of First Nations to point out that current federal funding only meets about 23% of the capital needs of Indigenous schools. The result: overcrowded classrooms, outdated facilities, and, in many cases, schools unfit to provide safe and healthy learning environments during extreme heat. At least 202 First Nations schools require expansions, and 56 need complete replacement, a situation that requires the Federal Government’s co-development of strategies with First Nations to promote climate resiliency, including extreme heat, in First Nations schools and child care facilities.

Comments

“The harmful physiological effects of indoor overheating have been well researched. Emerging evidence is reinforcing the message that prolonged exposure to indoor temperatures greater than 26°C should be avoided to protect people susceptible to heat. Children, the elderly, and individuals with chronic health conditions are particularly vulnerable.”

• Dr. Glen Kenny, Director, Human and Environmental Physiology Unit, University of Ottawa

“Parents and families across Canada are sounding the alarm about the effects of the climate crisis on their children, including the rising incidence of extreme heat. We enthusiastically endorse this collective Call for Action because it sets forth a holistic and equity-focused strategy for action—one that puts children first. That means involving communities in planning, and prioritizing those disproportionately impacted by extreme heat not only in their schools and child care settings, but also in their homes and neighbourhoods. Our collective vision is for solutions that don’t just cool educational settings, but build greener, more resilient environments for all.”

• Anne Keary, For Our Kids

“Climate change, including escalating extreme heat events, poses real threats to children’s physical and mental health. With a mandate for cross-sectoral collaboration to reduce exposure to health hazards and improve health equity, local public health agencies are well-positioned to work with school boards, child care providers and other community partners to ensure educational settings are equipped with heat-health protective infrastructure to reduce climate risks for children in the face of a rapidly warming planet."

• Helen Doyle, Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) member, and Chair, Environmental Health Workgroup, Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA) 

“The benefits of outdoor play and learning for children’s social, emotional and cognitive development are undisputed. Simply put, children thrive when they have ample time outdoors. Without proactive measures now to create heat-resilient outdoor play and learning settings, climate change will take an even greater toll on our children and their futures. This collective Call for Action outlines the path forward to climate-resilient learning environments for all children, both indoors and out.”

• Louise de Lannoy, Executive Director, Outdoor Play Canada

* * * * *

Signatories to the Call to Action are organizations devoted to public health, environmental protection, climate action, legal aid, social justice, education, early learning and child care, occupational health and safety, and parent advocacy:

1. Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment (CPCHE)
2. Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA)*
3. Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE)*
4. Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment (CANE)*
5. Canadian Child Care Federation (CCCF)*
6. Center for Environmental Health Equity (CEHE)*
7. Environmental Health Clinic at Women’s College Hospital*
8. Little Things Matter**
9. Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA)*
10. Pollution Probe*
11. Prenatal Environmental Health Education (PEHE) Collaboration**
12. Andrew Fleck Children’s Services 
13. Association of Early Childhood Educators of Newfoundland and Labrador (AECENL)
14. Association of Early Childhood Educators of Nova Scotia (AECENS)
15. BC Society of Transition Houses (BCSTH)
16. Canadian Health Association for Sustainability and Equity (CHASE)
17. Canadian Institute of Public Health Inspectors - Ontario Branch (CIPHI-O)
18. Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA)
19. Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Toronto (CCL-T)
20. Clean Air Partnership
21. Climate Action for Lifelong Learners (CALL) 
22. Climate Emergency Unit 
23. Climate Legacy 
24. EcoSchools
25. Efficiency Canada 
26. Environmental Defence 
27. Environmental Education Ontario 
28. First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society
29. For Our Kids
30. Green Communities Canada
31. Health Providers Against Poverty (HPAP) 
32. Just Futures Kingston
33. Low-Income Energy Network (LIEN)
34. New Brunswick Lung
35. Outdoor Play Canada
36. Prevent Cancer Now
37. Seniors for Climate Action Now! 
38. Take Me Outside
39. The CHANGE Research Lab
40. The Climate Reality Project Canada
41. Windfall Ecology Centre

 

* * * * *

 

Available for comment:

Erica Phipps, MPH, PhD, Executive Director, CPCHE 

Jacqueline Wilson, Legal Counsel, CELA

Helen Doyle, B.Sc., CPHI(C) - Ontario Public Health Association/Canadian Public Health Association

Glen P. Kenny; PhD (Med), FCAHS, FACSM, Director, Human and Environmental Physiology Research Unit, University of Ottawa; Lead investigator, Operation Heat Shield Canada

Capitalism, Fascism, and the First American Dictatorship

By Jeremy Cloward

April 22, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by Nash0h, Creative Commons 4.0



“Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them…Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.” – German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) as quoted in Joachim Fest’s, Hitler, (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1973), 3.

Introduction: Capitalism & Fascism

Capitalism generates two classes – the working class and the owning class. Either you own the productive forces of society or you work for someone that does. Profits are “made” in a capitalist economy by the owning class paying the working class less than the value of the product the working class produces. The business or industry may differ but the method of capital extraction is always the same. It is a zero-sum game with basic arithmetic explaining the dizzying heights of wealth that the owning class has been able to extract from what is often the grinding labor of the working class. When fascist states develop in a capitalist economy, historically the state has always come down on the side of the owning class. Conversely, while fascist regimes have advanced the class interests of the owning class – namely, capital accumulation – the very rich have used their class power to help carry out the policy aims of the ruling class. Which has always included the destruction of any kind of political opposition or attempt at economic gain by the working class.

The Historical Examples of Chile & Argentina

This was certainly true in Chile during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). With the secret support of the CIA and the Nixon Administration as well as the obvious support of the business classes of the US and Chile through their massive “investments” in the Chilean economy, Pinochet and his traitorous officers ordered the outrageous bombing of the Chilean “White House” La Moneda with the democratically-elected socialist president of Chile, Dr. Salvador Allende, still inside the presidential palace. The attack led both to the death of Allende – one of the brightest figures ever to grace the political stage in the history of the world – and the collapse of his emerging socialist government. After taking power, the Pinochet regime ripped away all of the productive forces of the Chilean economy from the working class and poor. Including more than 350 factories as well as the powerful mining and copper industries which had been primarily owned by US corporations before they had been nationalized under Allende which were then returned by Pinochet to the US and Chilean owning classes.

The Pinochet regime then went about reorganizing the Chilean economy along neoliberal lines (i.e., slashing the social welfare state, privatizing state-owned enterprises, deregulation of commerce, and growing the military in general) as developed by the “Chicago Boys” which was, if nothing else, the exact type of politico-economic theory that was hoped for to be imposed on the Chilean economy by the US and Chilean rich. To fully lock-in his rule and the owning class’s place back atop the politico-economic and social order, in the days immediately after the coup and in the years to come, Pinochet brutally repressed all dissent through arbitrary arrests, torture, murder, and “disappearances” of tens of thousands of Chileans with the full support of the US government.

A similar story took place in Argentina from 1974-1983 when a military junta took power and waged a Dirty War against the Argentinian people as part of Operation Condor which was a program initiated by Pinochet and backed by the US to destroy leftist opposition throughout Latin America. In following the brutal example set by Pinochet, the junta in Argentina, led most prominently by General Jorge Rafael Videla, initiated a state-sponsored war on Argentinian-leftists with its own abductions, torture, murder, and disappearance program which they carried-out with merciless cruelty. Today, the junta’s rule remains one of the most brutal examples in Latin America of the terrible achievements of Operation Condor for Argentina’s near unmatched record of human rights atrocities. Which included, among other horrors, throwing leftist opponents and “dissident nuns and mothers” from helicopters and planes into the ocean to be disappeared for all-time.

A number of multinational corporations worked with the Videla regime in carrying out its “terror campaign”. Most notably, Ford and Mercedez-Benz. In assisting Videla and his officers with their nearly unspeakable repression program, Ford assisted the junta by providing the military with a list of workers to kill, how to identify them, an incarceration center on its grounds, and the company’s head of security to torture workers that the military had arrested. In fact, the regime’s death squads car of choice during its Dirty War was the Ford Falcon which it used to disappear people off the streets of Buenos Aires.

Nazi Germany of the 1930s & the United States Today

In Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler’s time, it was Porsche, General Motors, Prescott Bush (i.e., the Bush Family patriarch), Deutsche Bank, and Mercedes-Benz, among a long list of others, who did business with the Nazi regime by building weapons, loaning funds to help build Auschwitz, and developing Hitler’s touring car. While in the US today, it is the pathetic looking “tech-leaders” of Amazon, Meta, and Tesla who helped bring Donald Trump to power and then stood side-by-side each other and him on inauguration day. In fact, the titans of commerce of nearly every significant sector of the American economy, from the oil industry to the NFL, lined up behind Trump to get him reelected in 2024 by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on his presidential campaign.

Why? Because, they agreed with his views on abortion? No. Instead, because they agreed with his views on capitalism and stood to benefit from his deregulation of almost everything as well as their appreciation for his decidedly hyper pro-business personal and political history. A thoroughly frustrated American working class may have been fooled by his antics for the last eight years but the American rich never were. They knew a class-confederate when they saw one. No matter how grotesque he may appear in manner or as the living embodiment of the economic system they rule over, he is still better than the alternative – a rational president (i.e., Kamala Harris or Joe Biden) who would have placed some guardrails on the never-ending pursuit of the accumulation of capital by the American owning class.

Moreover and just as telling, there is not one politically significant difference between Nazi Germany of the early 1930s and the United States today with the exception of Adolf Hitler having vastly more talent than Donald Trump and Hitler receiving less of the popular vote for president in Germany in 1932 (i.e., 36.8%) than did Trump in the US in 2024 (i.e., 49.8%). Indeed, consider the following:

Rule by decree by a convicted felon; dismantling the state to concentrate power in the hands of the executive branch; arrests and deportations of “undesirables;” white supremacy and segregation; undermining women’s rights as well as a civil sexual assault conviction against Trump (though not Hitler); anti-LGBT, anti-communist, and anti-immigrant policies which include a national registry for “unfavored groups” (i.e., Jews in Germany vs. undocumented workers in the US with the IRS now working with ICE to identify migrant workers for deportation); anti-union and anti-working class policies; ultra-nationalism; forcing institutions such as universities to adopt the regime’s racist ideology including the suppression of dissent; attempting to control the arts; book banning or book burning; the ever-present and extreme-valuing of the military; and each regime’s contempt for science, the Truth, the rule of law, the people in general, and most importantly, democracy itself.

Yet, unbelievably, the whole world is staring down the destructive power of an American regime that is potentially worse than the hell the Nazis and Adolf Hitler brought to Earth eighty years ago with their initiating of a world war that brought about the deaths of some 80 million people. However, the German military of the 1930s was not even close to possessing the military power of the United States today – the most powerful military in the history of the world – with troops stationed in over 150 countries and a nuclear arsenal powerful enough to bring about the sudden sixth mass global extinction of virtually every living thing on the planet. While the Nazi’s motto may well have been, “We will rule the world or bring half of the world down with us,” the Trump regime can actually do it.

Indeed, in just the first 100 days with the fate of the world in his hands, Trump has begun to dismantle the republic by destroying nearly every federal department, program, and agency from the Department of Education to the Environmental Protection Agency. He has cut tens of billions of dollars from the social welfare state for the poor, children, minority groups, the sick and disabled, and the very old. All the while firing tens of thousands of federal workers. And, like a mob boss, extorted law firms to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been deemed political enemies and who must now work for him for free.

At the same time, Trump is threatening to expand the empire – and distort it – to heights never seen before in American history. His imperial aims now include taking by force if necessary, Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Gaza Strip. What’s more, almost unbelievably, he has now sided with North Korea and the murderous dictator of Russia in the United Nations against the West; sanctioned the International Criminal Court; withdrawn from the WHO, the Paris Agreement, the UN Human Rights Council, USAID, and continues to threaten to pull the US out of NATO. Doing so would guarantee a global realignment of power creating a US vs. the world state of affairs with new international alignments that may not be easy to predict nor be beneficial geo-politically for the United States. Finally, he has imposed chaotic global tariffs on nearly every country in the world, with the notable exception of Russia, which make no sense to any thoughtful person. Taken all together, the decisions made by this shockingly ignorant, thin-skinned, and impulsive ruler who is unable to admit to making a mistake make clear the Caligulan madness (and stupidity) the whole world is now facing.

The Psychological Component & Neoliberalism

If Hitler was an intelligent psychopath with a dark charisma as most historians agree, then Trump is a destructive psychopath who is unable to learn as many psychiatrists have concluded. In fact, the noted Yale expert on violence, psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, has commented that his mental pathology is easy to predict. To destroy. To force a death spiral. For her there is no real political ideology coming from him so much as a “dangerous” disorganization of the mind. Moreover, Lee argues that not only does Trump exhibit “dangerousness” but is unfit for almost any job and much less the president of United States, as “he could not meet the most basic criteria for [mental] fitness for making decisions” which real political leadership is based almost solely upon. Indeed, for Lee, the US and the world are not facing a political problem so much as a public health problem where an individual with a highly disordered mind has been placed in a position of power and whose symptoms have now spread to weak-minded, childhood-traumatized, and societally stressed individuals.

The creation of a significant number of these socially stressed people are not only largely from the American working class but have been made so as a result of 45 years of the societal stresses of neoliberalism that have been imposed on the United States, western society, and in fact, the world in general. Worse still, the United States is experiencing the most extreme formulation of neoliberalism the world has ever seen with the consequences not entirely predictable. But to even speculate, one cannot help but imagine a dystopian future that may not benefit anyone except the rich and powerful. For instance, we may find in a coming American society that is not so far off, “social unrest” which has been created by the Trump regime through its destruction of the republic which is then suppressed by the state and key sectors within the US owning class. As things stand now, those in line to benefit the most from future government contracts to control segments of American society who are out-of-step with the Trump regime are the tech industry for surveillance and identification of “unfavored groups,” the private security and transportation industries for the arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, and the prison-industrial-complex to incarcerate political opponents and migrant workers.

The Institutional Creation of the Dictatorship and a Dark Future?

Yet, what is just as dangerous as Trump’s personality disorders (whatever they might be) and the ongoing impact of neoliberalism is that he is the beneficiary of the most important case to ever come before the once highly-respected Supreme Court in Trump v. United States (2024). The case addressed the question of “presidential immunity” in the overturning of the presidential election of 2020. In Trump, the Court held that, “the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” With those words, these great practitioners of law from the best the Ivy League has to offer, shot a poison bullet right through the heart of what was already the staggering American republic, elevating the presidency to that of a ruler without restraint.

Indeed, the Court created an American dictatorship that is protected by the institutional powers of that institution itself. Now with the complete acquiescence of the Trump-Republican dominated congress there is no need for a “Reichstag fire.” With the final check, the courts, which he ignores, who or what is to stop him from anything including imprisoning, torturing, murdering, or disappearing US citizens whom he considers to be political enemies as was the case in Chile, Argentina, or Nazi Germany? The current regime is already arresting and deporting foreign nationals with legal standing who oppose the politics of this mad king by daring to call the massacre in the West Bank by the US-backed Israeli government, a massacre. As well as deporting some who are not “political” at all.

In fact today, in trying to bring that future dystopian society into existence, the Trump regime now wants to contract out “round-ups” of undocumented workers to corporations and run the program like “Amazon Prime.” This, of course, would enormously increase the amount of people that the regime can return to decidedly poor or violent countries for what is still no discernible reason at all. Will the arrests (and deportations) of American citizens be next? Certainly, it is the hallmark of a tyrant if there is one. What horror or atrocity could come afterward? Will we have our own “Kristallnacht” carried out by some of the regime’s loyalists against our own scapegoats? If the US continues down this dark path, will it finally fall into the abyss of mass murder? We don’t know. But if we are to look to Nazi Germany as our guide down this Dantian-road into Hell then the final outcome is only too clear. Without question, driven by his basest instincts, the powers of this (or any) dictatorship are tailor-made to go wrong for a criminal like Trump.

The Way Forward…

The ruling and owning classes of any society can never be trusted. If for no other reason, it has always been the rich and powerful who have sent everyone else to their deaths against the sword and the machine gun for their benefit. When the political power of the state and the class power of the rich bind together and slip into fascism, then the true enemy of the people, if not obvious already, becomes clear – the owning class and the state, itself. In a capitalist-fascist state there is no turning back. There is no redemption of the social order without an outright removal from power of the ruling class and rich.

This has always been true in history as was the case in Chile, Argentina, and Nazi Germany. The collapse of the government and prosecution of the criminals that ran the state (i.e., Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, and the Nazi politico-military high command at Nuremburg) was required to restore any kind of faith in government. Even if none of these societies ever moved economically farther to the left than the progressive fiscal policies made possible by the new liberal states that had replaced the fascist regimes. This was not possible because the owning classes were never removed from power in any of these societies that emerged from the ashes of the collapsed or defeated fascist governments.

With the truth of today now staring us squarely in the face maybe we can all see the coming death of our republic – if it hasn’t died already with our mad dictator on the loose now saying that he thinks he can run for a third presidential term. Regardless, hopefully we can all see what has to be done – the death of the dictatorship and the restoration of the republic. Only formulated in a way unlike it has ever existed. A true republic governed by the people and for the people; by the working class and for the working class. Not merely a return to the outlines of the republic that was founded by the ruling class and the rich of the late 1700s with its built-in social, political, and economic inequalities which have brought us to this hour in history. Instead, today the American republic requires that we respond in a totally original manner with a complete reorganization of the state, economic system, and society where each is rooted in justice and complete equality. It is the only way forward.

For this to happen the American working class needs to awaken to its class position within the national capitalist order, and in fact, the global capitalist economic system itself. In so doing, it will then understand not only its class interests but the true dimensions of its class power and see that the political concerns of the working class have nothing to do with the politics of a billionaire president or any of his class in the United States or the world over. Once done so, the American working class can then take aim at bringing to an end an economic system, and its most horrifying political overlord, fascism, which from their inception promised to reap only a bitter harvest for the many while providing power and riches for the very few.

Indeed, they will emerge from the “motor force of history” ready to create a better society for all. It will truly take a Herculean-effort to do so but one that is not without historical precedent. However, if we deny it or choose not to do anything about it instead of facing the painful truths made clear by the dark light shining from this new American dictatorship, then our downfall is inevitable. For certain, our country will be just one more nation on the pages of history that rose and fell according to what should be the timeless maxim of all countries – “In the end, all nations get the government that they deserve.”


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Jeremy Cloward

Jeremy Cloward is a political science professor and author living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has taught at the junior college and university level for the past 19 years and is the author of three books and multiple articles that have been published in the Oakland Post, the Hampton Institute, Socialist Worker, Project Censored, and the East Bay Times. His college-level American politics textbook, Class Power and the Political Economy of the American Political System, is now in its third edition and has been endorsed by the progressive author Michael Parenti, the director of Project Censored, Mickey Huff, and the professor and former Central Committee member of the Black Panther Party, Phyllis Jackson.

Honoring Pope Francis, Who Championed the Glorious World Around Us

Francis’s project for the Earth—a recovery of fellow feeling, with a special attention to the poor—is the only thing that can save us over time.


Pope Francis greets Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg, right, during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, on Wednesday, April 17, 2019.
(Photo: Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Bill Mckibben

350.ORG
Apr 21, 2025

The Crucial Years


Just in case I thought one couldn’t feel more forlorn right now, the word came this morning of the death of Pope Francis. It hit me hard—not because I’m a Catholic (I’m a Methodist) but because I had always felt buoyed by his remarkable spirit. If he could bring new hope and energy to an institution as hidebound as the Vatican, there was reason for all of us to go on working on our own hidebound institutions—and if he could stand so completely in solidarity with the world’s poor and vulnerable, then it gave the rest of us something to aim for.

I thought this from the start, when he became the first pope to choose the name of Francis—that countercultural blaze of possibility in a dark time—and when he showed his mastery of the art of gesture, washing the feet of women, of prisoners, of Muslim refugees. (Only Greta Thunberg, with her school strike, has so mastered the power of gesture in modern politics).

But he brought that moral resolve to the question of climate change, making it the subject of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si,” the most important document of his papacy and arguably the most important piece of writing so far this millennium. I spent several weeks living with that book-length epistle in order to write about it for The New York Review of Books, and though I briefly met the man himself in Rome, it is that encounter with his mind that really lives with me. “Laudato Si” is a truly remarkable document—yes, it exists as a response to the climate crisis (and it was absolutely crucial in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks, consolidating elite opinion behind the idea that some kind of deal was required). But it uses the climate crisis to talk in broad and powerful terms about modernity.

The ecological problems we face are not, in their origin, technological, says Francis. Instead, “a certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us.” He is no Luddite (“who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper?”) but he insists that we have succumbed to a “technocratic paradigm,” which leads us to believe that “every increase in power means ‘an increase of “progress” itself’… as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such.” This paradigm “exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object.” Men and women, he writes, have from the start
intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand.


In our world, however, “human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational.” With the great power that technology has afforded us, it’s become
easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers, and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the Earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.


The deterioration of the environment, he says, is just one sign of this “reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life.”

I think Francis’s project for the Earth—a recovery of fellow feeling, with a special attention to the poor—is the only thing that can save us over time. But it will take time—obviously for the moment we’ve chosen the opposite path, as exemplified by the fact that JD Vance, scourge of the refugee, darkened his last day on Earth.

In the meantime, Francis was very much a pragmatist, and one advised by excellent scientists and engineers. As a result, he had a clear technological preference: the rapid spread of solar power everywhere. He favored it because it was clean, and because it was liberating—the best short-term hope of bringing power to those without it, and leaving that power in their hands, not the hands of some oligarch somewhere.

As a result, he followed up “Laudato Si” with a letter last summer, “Fratello Sole,” which reminds everyone that the climate crisis is powered by fossil fuel, and which goes on to say
There is a need to make a transition to a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the goal of climate neutrality. Mankind has the technological means to deal with this environmental transformation and its pernicious ethical, social, economic, and political consequences, and, among these, solar energy plays a key role.


As a result, he ordered the Vatican to begin construction of a field of solar panels on land it owned near Rome—an agrivoltaic project that would produce not just food but enough solar power to entirely power the city-state that is the Vatican. It is designed, in his words, to provide “the complete energy sustenance of Vatican City State.” That is to say, this will soon be the first nation powered entirely by the sun.

The level of emotion—of love—in this decision is notable. The pope named “Laudato Si” (“Praised be”) after the first two words of his namesake’s “Canticle to the Sun,” and “Fratello Sole” was even more closely tied—those are the words that the first Francis used to address Brother Sun. I reprint the opening of the Canticle here, in homage to both men, and to their sense of humble communion with the glorious world around us.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

The world is a poorer place this morning. But far richer for his having lived.

© 2022 Bill McKibben


Bill Mckibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."
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Scientific consensus, climate and Catholicism: A look back at Pope Francis’s environmental legacy

Copyright AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

By Euronews Green

Published on 21/04/2025 - 

Pope Francis's legacy includes efforts to open the eyes of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics to the dangers of climate change.

Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday, 21 April, aged 88, the Vatican has announced.

Elected in 2013 following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, he was the head of the Catholic Church for just over a decade.

He will be remembered in part for his efforts to open the eyes of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics to the dangers of climate change.

Throughout his life, he was vocal about these risks, especially their impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

"Pope Francis has been a towering figure of human dignity, and an unflinching global champion of climate action as a vital means to deliver it," UN climate chief Simon Stiell said on the passing of Pope Francis.

"Through his tireless advocacy, Pope Francis reminded us there can be no shared prosperity until we make peace with nature and protect the most vulnerable, as pollution and environmental destruction bring our planet close to ‘breaking point’."

Stiell added that Pope Francis "had a deep working knowledge of complex climate issues, and his leadership brought together those most powerful forces of faith and science to deliver unimpeachable truths, highlighting the costs of the climate crisis for billions of people".

"His Holiness’ passing will be felt profoundly by countless millions, but his message will live on: Humanity is community. And when any one community is abandoned – to poverty, starvation, climate disasters and injustice – all of humanity is deeply diminished, materially and morally, in equal measures."

‘The planet being squeezed dry’

During his leadership of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis frequently spoke about climate change.

Perhaps his most striking note on the subject was Laudato si’: On Care For Our Common Home, a 184-page landmark document published in 2015. In this pastoral letter, Pope Francis laments the state of environmental damage and global warming, criticising consumerism and taking aim at the “modern myth of unlimited material progress”.

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“It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit,” he wrote.

A giant screen broadcasts Pope Francis waving at the end of the Angelus noon prayer, 

from the chapel of the hotel at the Vatican grounds where he lives.AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

The text also lays out the scientific case for human-caused climate change, linking it to a moral perspective and warning of “serious consequences” if things don’t change. Pope Francis left no doubt that he backed the scientific consensus that global warming was down to greenhouse gases released by human activity.

This document also came just six months before COP21 - the UN climate change conference where the historic Paris Agreement was signed. Many believe it, and the Vatican’s involvement in negotiations, had a not insignificant impact on this outcome.

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Delegations from Catholic countries made strong climate commitments during this COP. The Pope’s ability to speak to people across many divides paved the way for him to become even more deeply involved in future UN climate change conferences.

The Catholic Church and UN climate conferences

Ahead of COP28 in Dubai in 2023, Pope Francis revisited the topic with an updated treatise on climate change. Laudate Deum is an apostolic exhortation calling for urgent action on the crisis.

“With the passage of time,” he wrote, “I have realised that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing breaking point.”

This time, he specifically took aim at citizens of wealthy countries living an “irresponsible lifestyle.” In the US, for example, Pope Francis highlighted that emissions per person were two times higher than in China and seven times more than the average of the world’s poorest countries.

He also pinpointed the continued use of fossil fuels as the primary driver of climate change.

Pope Francis intended to go to COP28 himself, making history as the first Pope to address the climate change conference. Flu and lung inflammation, however, prevented him from travelling to Dubai, with his speech instead read by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin.

Copies of Pope Francis' encyclical letter on environment "Laudate Deum" are prepared for sale in a bookshop in Rome.AP Photo/Andrew Medichini

Again, drawing together moral obligations and scientific consensus, he criticised efforts to shift blame for the climate crisis to the rising population figures in poor countries. Instead, he singled out historic emitters “responsible for a deeply troubling ecological debt”.

Hitting on one of the main topics of COP28, he said it was only fair that these countries that have used excessive amounts of fossil fuels wipe out the debts of poorer nations. Who pays for the loss and damage done by climate change is an argument that still continues to this day.

Pope Francis was once again too unwell to travel to COP29 in Azerbaijan last year but sent a message to the UN climate conference. Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, instead delivered his message to world leaders gathered in Baku.

He said that the "real challenge of our century” was indifference towards the climate crisis, emphasising that “indifference is an accomplice to injustice”.

The Pope appealed to countries which have contributed the most greenhouse gases to acknowledge their "ecological debt" to others.

He called for “a new international financial architecture” that was “based on the principles of equity, justice, and solidarity”.

The Catholic Church organises its own climate conference

Throughout his life and even up to the end, Pope Francis continued to highlight issues of inequality in the consequences of climate change.

In 2019, he backed calls for ecocide to be made the “fifth crime against peace” - an evil equivalent to genocide and ethnic cleansing - and declared it a sin. He has met with presidents, prime ministers, heads of state, CEOs, and boards of big companies over the years to talk about the issue.

And in May 2024, he organised the Catholic Church’s own three-day conference on climate resilience at the Vatican. Attendees included 16 mayors of international cities such as London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, as well as governors from around the world.

Rather than solely focusing on mitigating climate change, it drew attention to the need for human adaptation. The Pope questioned political leaders on whether “we are working for a culture of life or for a culture of death.”

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“The wealthier nations, around one billion people, produce more than half of the heat-trapping pollutants,” he told participants of the summit.

“On the contrary, the three billion poorer people contribute less than 10 per cent, yet they suffer 75 per cent of the resulting damage.”

This summit once again saw Pope Francis reiterate his belief that the destruction of the environment is an “offence against God” and a “structural sin” that endangers all people.

It is statements like these that made Pope Francis a respected voice on climate change, with many praising his ability to drive collective action across divides. He will be remembered for his moral leadership that bridged the gap between the interconnected issues of poverty, climate adaptation and the consequences of human-caused global warming.

 

Uroscopy: Medieval Medicine’s Obsession With Urine – Analysis

People showing a sample of urine to the physician Constantine the African. Credit: Unknown author, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawl. C. 328, fol. 3r, Wikimedia Commons

 April 19, 2025  

By Katherine Harvey

For centuries, physicians used urine to diagnose disease, predict death, and even determine sexual history—analyzing its color, consistency, and contents with remarkable confidence.

In the mid-thirteenth century, William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan friar, traveled to the Mongol Empire. The main purpose of his visit was to undertake missionary work, but he also wrote a colorful account of his travels for King Louis IX of France, in which he described the region and its inhabitants. Among his many curious observations, he was astonished to find that the local physicians, who were generally skilled and knowledgeable, did not examine their patients’ urine.

To the modern reader, this seems an odd detail to highlight, but William came from a world in which uroscopy—the examination of urine for the purpose of diagnosis and prognosis—was one of a doctor’s most valued skills. The link was so strong that the urine flask became the identifying symbol of the late medieval physician, who was often shown examining a sample.

The symbol was used both to celebrate illustrious figures such as St. Cosmas(the patron saint of medicine) and to punish charlatans like Roger Clerk of Wandsworth, who in 1382 was found guilty of selling useless “cures” to the poor despite having no medical knowledge or training. He was led to the pillory on a saddleless horse, “a urinal being hung before him, and another urinal on his back” in mockery of his malpractice.

Satirists jeered at practitioners for their obsession with such unsavory matter (Petrarch memorably claimed that the papal physicians were pale and emaciated because they “rummage around in sloshing chamber pots“), and comic images of monkey physicians examining urine flasks are found in both manuscript marginalia and in early 14th-century stained glass at York Minster.

Uroscopy and the Humoral Body

Medieval physicians were interested in their patients’ urine because it provided immediate insight into the humoral state of the body. Before William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood in the 17th century, physicians believed that the principal purpose of digestion was to convert food into blood, which was constantly being used up and thus had to be replenished every night while the patient slept.

Digestion was a complex, multi-stage process, and it led to various waste products like urine, which bore traces of the organs involved in its production (including the stomach, intestines, liver, and kidneys). Consequently, if the body was too hot or too cold, or if its humors were out of balance, this would be apparent from the urine it produced.

Uroscopy is an ancient practice, dating back at least as far as the ancient Babylonians, and was widely discussed by the classical authorities whose writings formed the basis of much medieval medical practice. The Hippocratic Aphorisms include advice on urine-based diagnosis and prognosis. For example, “colorless urine is bad; it is especially common in those with disease on the brain” and “the presence of particles like coarse meal in the urine of patients with fever signifies a long illness.”

Urine Illustrated Guides

Over the centuries, substantial literature on the subject accumulated, and the Articella—a collection of treatises that formed the basis of university medical education in the later Middle Ages—included Isaac Judaeus’ Liber Urinarum (written in the ninth century) and De urinis by Giles of Corbeil (ca. 1140–1220). Since uroscopy lent itself to diagrammatic representation, practicing physicians often used illustrated guides: such texts survive in sufficient numbers to suggest that they were widely employed working tools in later medieval Europe.

A particularly fine example is found in Bodleian Library MS Savile 39, which includes a late fourteenth-century ring diagram complete with twenty labeled flasks, their colors ranging from white to black. The flasks are grouped according to meaning: four reddish-gold samples, for example, signify good digestion, whilst three flasks of very dark liquid suggest death.

Some authors are quite imaginative in their description of the colors: in a late fifteenth-century miscellany, one sample is described as being “green like cabbage.” Another widely circulated treatise described a “type of black urine that is caused by mortification, and that type of blackness is most like a polished black horn, or like a raven’s feather, or like a man from Ethiopia.”

Such comparisons to familiar sights were probably intended to help practitioners distinguish between very similar colors and to compensate for the shortcomings of the diagrams, the decoration of which sometimes owed more to the availability of pigments than to scientific accuracy.

Signifying Urine Color

Many treatises suggested that it was possible to identify several layers in the urine, which meant that some diagrams show samples with very distinctive (and surely exaggerated) color differences: red with a mint-green layer on top or olive green with an orange-ish ring. If the top layer was particularly large, it might signify head pain; if it was very foamy, that indicated “gassiness boiling into the urinary vessels or distension or some other disorder of the lung.”

The middle region should be examined for cloudiness, which could be a good or a bad sign depending on the condition from which the patient was suffering. It was at the bottom of the sample that one was most likely to see sediments, although these might also be suspended in the urine.

Some texts place particular emphasis on things found in urine: in this pair of flasks, from an early 15th-century medical miscellany, we can see blood in one sample and particles suspended in the other. The captions explain the meaning of these worrying features: blood in the urine indicates a broken vein at the back of the head, and gravel “betokeneth ache and spite of the stone in the reynes”—that is, kidney stones.

Interpreting Urine

To interpret all these signs correctly, the skilled physician would not simply match the sample to the color swatch; rather, he would combine his observations with his own extensive knowledge (both theoretical and practical) in order to identify what ailed his patient and determine the likely progression of his or her disease.

Surprisingly often, this was done remotely: such was the trust in this method that many patients simply sent a sample to the doctor, who examined it and sent his verdict back. In 1334, the Aragonese towns of Vic and Montcada agreed to share a municipal physician, even though they were some sixty kilometers apart. The man appointed, Romon Ardey, was to live in Vic but to interpret urines brought to him from either town.

Far from being a strategy restricted to those who could not afford to see a doctor, this form of consultation was used even by the wealthiest members of society, such as Agnes, Lady Stonor, who in 1480, “sente here water unto M. Derworthe to undirstonde his conceite, ande howe he demyth by her water whedir she be in wey of mending.” His verdict is not recorded, but she died the following year.

Questioning Urine and the Rise of Bedside Medicine

Not everyone thought this was a good idea: Isaac Judaeus, author of one of the most authoritative uroscopy treatises, criticized “fools who would base prophecies on it, without seeing the patient, and determine what disease is present, and whether the patient will die, and other foolishness.”

Anyone who did consult in this way should obtain as much contextual information as possible to avoid falling into the same trap as the eminent Parisian physician Guillaume Boucher (d. 1410). He examined a sample and confidently announced that it belonged to a man with stomach problems. The couriers burst out laughing because it was produced by a woman.

Partly motivated by a desire to avoid such humiliation, university-educated physicians increasingly argued that bedside medicine was the best form of treatment: it allowed the practitioner to conduct a physical examination (considering other important signs, such as pulse, and scrutinizing other excreta, such as sweat and feces) and to interrogate the patient about his symptoms.

Asserting Authority: Performing With Urine

Bedside medicine also allowed the physician to assert authority by showing off his knowledge and skills—something that most were very keen to do in order to prove their superiority over their many rivals in the medical marketplace. Examining a urine sample in the presence of the patient who produced it, plus his family, friends, or servants, could be a particularly effective way to do this, as the process was straightforward but impressive.

Ideally, the sample was collected in the morning, after the patient had slept and before he drank anything, and then allowed to settle for several hours; during this time, it must not be exposed to direct sunlight or excessive heat, which might change its composition. The physician’s inspection typically took place towards the end of his visit, and he often made a performance of it, holding the flask up to the light and scrutinizing it at length.

One 12th-century manual suggested, “While you look at the urine for a long time, you pay attention to its color, substance, and quantity and to its contents from the diversity of which you will diagnose the different kinds of diseases… whereupon you promise health to the patient who is hanging on your lips.”

Identifying Conditions Using Urine

A skilled physician could identify a whole range of conditions based on a urine sample. According to Giles of Corbeil’s influential treatise, pure and unclotted blood in the urine indicated a problem with the kidneys, especially if it was accompanied by pain: “lividity coupled with minute, distinct particles consistently indicates respiratory trouble,” and gout was revealed by “tiny white flecks.”

Urine was a particularly useful tool for diagnosing leprosy because the immediate physiological cause was thought to be a malfunctioning liver—an organ that was central to the digestive process, and thus, any problems would be visible in the urine.

In 1456, when Richard Walsham, a monk of Norwich Cathedral Priory, was suspected of contracting leprosy, the Prior had several physicians examine his body and urine in order to confirm that he was not afflicted.

Predicting Death

Medieval people also believed that uroscopy could reveal when an individual would die, allowing him to use his final days wisely. After William the Conqueror fell from his horse in 1087, he suffered agonizing internal injuries. According to the chronicler William of Malmesbury (ca. 1090–1143), his physicians “inspected his urine and foretold certain death,” which allowed him to receive the last rites and to put his affairs in order.

In 1214, suspecting that he was fatally ill, Abbot John of St Albans examined his own urine for “the small, hidden marks which he knew to be signs of death” and correctly predicted that he had only three days to live. The Abbey’s chronicler admiringly noted that being “very experienced in the art of medicine, [John] had often made similar infallible predictions… about others.”

Tracking Fertility

Urine predicted the end of life, but it could also be used to track its conception through fertility testing. The Trotula, an influential compendium of women’s medicine, recommended that both husband and wife should urinate in a pot of bran: if, after ten days, either pot was stinking and full of worms, that indicated which spouse was infertile.

According to The Dome of Uryne (a widely circulated Middle English compendium of uroscopic texts), it was possible to know whether a woman had conceived immediately after intercourse: if her urine was clear, then she was pregnant, and if it was thick, she was not.

A few months on, the sex of the child could be determined by the cloudiness of the mother’s urine, whilst lead-colored urine suggested a miscarriage. However, not all physicians were willing to pronounce on such matters. A wise one would refuse to do so if he suspected that a female patient intended to procure an abortion.

Sexual History

Urine could be used to uncover an individual’s sexual history. The water of a “constant virgin” would be “wan and extremely calm” and passed in a slow, delicate fashion because the passages of the womb and vulva were narrow. (It was evidently common to conflate the urinary passage and vagina.) On the other hand, “Thick urine of a woman declares her to be corrupt.” Men’s urine could be equally revealing, as seed in the bottom of the flask proved that the provider recently had sex.

In the mid-twelfth century, shortly after taking his third wife, Ralph, Count of Vermandois, became seriously ill, and his doctor told him to abstain from marital relations. But when the physician examined the count’s urine, he realized that his advice had been ignored and correctly predicted that Ralph would be dead within three days.

Cynical Patients

Count Ralph’s unfortunate demise highlighted another potential problem with uroscopy: patients who ignored or mistrusted their doctors. Some went so far as to test the skills of their chosen practitioner. Although Arabic medical authorities such as Rhazes and Avicenna—both of whom were widely read and highly respected in the medieval West—recommended it, European physicians rarely smelt or tasted urine for medical reasons.

Even so, they might be well-advised to give it a discreet sniff since cynical patients sometimes provided samples of white wine or other yellowish liquids. In one extreme case from around the year 1000, the Duke of Bavaria began his consultation with the famous monk-physician Notker by sending him a urine sample provided not by the duke but by a pregnant servant girl. On examining it, Notker fell to his knees, praising God and declaring: “Within the week, the Lord will perform an unheard-of miracle: the duke will give birth to a son!” Shortly afterward, the maid produced a baby boy, and the duke sent his messengers back to Notker with a sample of his own.

Trust in Uroscopy

In theory, patients could also fall victim to urine-related trickery, as happens in a humorous tale from The Decameron in which Calandrino’s friends team up with a doctor to convince him he is pregnant. But for the most part, the demand and trust in uroscopy were high because it seemed to offer objective and certain diagnoses for a relatively small cost.

In 1315, when Jaume II of Aragon closed a street in Barcelona’s Jewish quarter, he exempted the physician Vidal Rouen because “many people have to show him the urine of sick people and to ask him for advice for them.” Other towns in the region appointed municipal physicians for this purpose: Abraham des Castlar, employed in this capacity by Castelló d’Empúries in 1316, agreed to “look at and assess all the urines brought to me by the citizens.”

High Demand

Indeed, the demand for uroscopy was too high to be satisfied by university-trained physicians (who were both rare and expensive), and many patients turned to less qualified practitioners.

In mid-fifteenth-century Essex, John Crophill worked as both a bailiff and a healer. Seemingly self-taught and certainly not university educated, his commonplace book includes two texts on urine (alongside others on subjects such as blood-letting and astrology), plus a list of patients whose urine he had examined and to whom he had provided cures.

Across the Channel, Jacoba Felice, an unlicensed female practitioner who appeared before the Parisian medical authorities in 1322, offered similar services. Several of her mostly female clientele recalled her “continually examining their urine in the manner of physicians and doctors” and reported that she had cured them when male physicians had failed to do so.

Eighteen years earlier, when Gueraula de Codines faced a similar hearing in Barcelona, she asserted that “she could diagnose a patient’s illness from his urine,” having been taught to do so by “a certain foreign doctor.” Clearly, her legal travails did not deter patients since three years later, she was back in court, claiming that many people consulted her and that her uroscopy skillswere especially in demand.

Uroscopy’s Lasting Effects

Whilst professional trust in uroscopy waned considerably after ca. 1500, partly because of its growing association with such quacks, patient enthusiasm for this cheap, convenient, and reliable practice remained high. Indeed, although uroscopy no longer serves as an all-purpose diagnostic tool, new forms of urine analysis have developed from these ancient traditions, and our present-day medical landscape is awash with urine samples.

Although 21st-century patients benefit from relatively recent innovations such as hormone-based pregnancy tests, color is still used to diagnose conditions including porphyria, whilst bloody and/or cloudy urine continues to be recognized as a sign of kidney stones and infections.

Although medieval understandings of urine were deeply flawed, the popularity and longevity of urine-based diagnosis reflect an enduring desire on the part of both patients and physicians for reliable tests that provided objective diagnoses and serve as an important reminder that, contrary to popular stereotypes of pre-modern medicine, much of it was rational, methodical, and rooted in science.

• About the author: Katherine Harvey is a UK-based historian, writer, and reviewer specializing in medieval history. She holds a BA, MA, and PhD in history from King’s College London, is an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and teaches for both Birkbeck and the Open University. She has published widely in both academic journals and popular periodicals, including BBC History Magazine, History Today, Aeon, and The Atlantic. Harvey reviews regularly for publications, including the Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement. Her book, The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages, was published by Reaktion in 2021.

Source: This article was originally published as “Troubled Waters: Reading Urine in Medieval Medicine” in The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it, please see: https://publicdomainreview.org/reusing-material/. It was produced for the Observatory by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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Katherine Harvey

Katherine Harvey is a UK-based historian, writer, and reviewer specializing in medieval history. She holds a BA, MA, and PhD in history from King's College London, is an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and teaches for both Birkbeck and the Open University. She has published widely in both academic journals and popular periodicals, including BBC History Magazine, History Today, Aeon, and The Atlantic. Harvey reviews regularly for publications, including the Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement. Her book, The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages, was published by Reaktion 

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