From New Latin vmbilicomantia (Agrippa), from Latin umbilicus the navel. 1995 C. Walker Encyc. Secret Knowledge 177: The arts of venamancy and umbilicomancy are divinatory systems linked with childbirth, which he [sc. Barthelemy Cocles] claims to have learned from his mother, a skilled midwife.
Not in OED. Original source lost!
From ancient Greek ouranos heaven, the heavens, the sky.
The variant form included by Shipley is without other evidence. This form was quite possible in the 17th century, which had ouranography a description of the heavens.
1657 G. Starkey Natures Explication and Helmont's Vindication 16 (OED): All other natural pratical Arts, as Geometry, Astronomy, Uranomancy, Geography, Arithmetick, and the like.
1926 OED.
1955 Shipley Dict. Early Eng. (1963) 16:
ouranomancy, uranomancy, the heavens.
1986 P. Hellweg Insomniac's Dict. x. 78: Uranomancy
(or ouranomancy) The heavens.
1904 G.S. Hall Adolescence I. 116 (OED): The many centuries when urinomancy and urinoscopy vied with astrology.
1926 OED.
1979 Joscelyn Godwin Robert Fludd
As practiced in former times it was quite a simplistic. In a
book by physician Thomas Brain entitled The Pisse-Prophet
dating from 1655, we are told that, basically, diseases were
categorised by uromancers into two types acute and
chronic, and that dark coloured urine signified acute
diseases, and weak, watery urine signified chronic diseases. Chemical
analysis of urine was not performed, rather it was looked at
concerning its "severall colours, parts, contents, substance,
quantity, [and] smell". Brian points out that such urine colouring
does not always signify acute illnesses. Here the physicians were
using simple colour metaphor, red = hot, therefore = fever. However,
Brian is probably simplifying things in order to discredit them.
Certainly urine with any discharge signifies some malady, and
clear urine is produced when healthy. This fact gave rise to
the old proverb (as recorded in John Florio's Florios
Second Frutes 1591) "I knowe no better phisick then to
piss cleare, that so a man may bid a figg for the phisition".
Yet, uromancy was much more than merely diagnosing disease. Brian
says (page 1):
Brain as quotes (page A2) a Latin proverb "often heard..spoken from
the mouth of many a well-read and experienced man in Physicke,
that (Urina est meretrix, vel mendax) the Vrine is an
Harlot, or a Lyer..."
The practice was also previously known as uroscopy,
and, according to Bailey, as late as 1755, was "commonly
called the casting of Waters". Rarely, termed
urinomancy.
1569 Sanford tr. Agrippa Of the vanitye and
uncertainties of atres and sciences lxxxiii, 145 b: Doo you not
daylie see howe they [sc. physicians] goo about the Citie with
ringed fingers, and dirtie gownes, with a sadde countenaunce, and
alwayes pale, and with a quicke pace, for hope of veray vile gayne,
renne from one Apothecaries shoppe to an other, seekinge and begging,
if in any place a man wil offer them urine, or a ball of ordure to looke
upon, & as the hooded vultures are beste nosed about deade bodies, so
these mē, are best nosed of al about excremēts: which
they say: Hippocrates was wont also to taste, that thereby he
might the better preceive the notion of the sicknesse: whiche thinge
also many doo attribute to Esculapius: who for this cause was of
Aristophanes called Scatophagos, in whiche worde they
be signified, which feede upon the superfluities of meates, which name
afterwards was derived to all Phisitians, in such wise, that wée call
them Scatophagians and Scatomanters, that is ordure
eaters, and lookers on ordure. For this cause Scatomācie,
Oromancie, Drymimancie, be called the diuinations or Prognostications
of Phisitiās, gathered by ordures and urines.
[1603 Christopher Heydon A Defence of Ivdiciall
Astrologie 9: Others also in derision name them, [sc.
physicians] Scatomantes, Ouromantes,
Drymimantes, to signify that their chiefest divination and living
is by base matters; as by excrements, vrine, and the like, according to
the verse: Stercus & vrina, Medicorum fercula prima.]
1625 James Hart The Anatomies of Urines I. v.
47 (OED): This parson being..reputed famous in vromancie.
1970 Man, Myth & Magic v. 658: Uromancy - by
urine.
1727 Bailey The Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. i:
UROMANCY [ouromanteia, of ouron Urine, and
manteia, Gr. Divination] the Guessing at the Nature
of a Disease by the Urine.
1740 Dyche & Pardon New General Eng. Dict.:
uromancy (s.) the divining, guessing, or forming a judgment by a
perosn's urine.
1755 Bailey An Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. (16th
ed.): UROMANCY [ouron, and manteia, Gr.] a
divining or guessing at the Nature of Disease by the Urine.
1899 Century Dict. (1903) VIII:
uromancy.. Diagnosis and prognosis of disease by inspection
of the urine.
1899 New Sydenham Society's Lexicon V: Uromancy. Diagnosis
or prognosis by obersvation of the urine.
1908 Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dict. ii.:
uromancy..The art of determining the nature and result of
disease by inspection of the urine alone; uroscopy. uromantia.
1912 Webs. New Int. Dict. uromancy [minor
words list]
c1920 Cassell's New Eng. Dict.
1926 OED.
1955 Shipley Dict. Early Eng. (1963) 17:
urimancy, urine.
1974 Mrs. Byrne's Dict. urimancy..fortunetelling
with urine.
1986 Urdang (ed.) -Ologies & -Isms (3rd ed.)
212: uromancy Rare. a form of divination by studying
urine. --uromantic, adj.
1993 McCormack Q&A 71: URIMANCY - urine.
Uromancy
Medical diagnosis gained by inspection of the urine. First recorded
in Agrippa where it is used derisively of physicians, along with
drymimancy and
scatomancy. This medical practise,
roughly speaking, is still in use today, but it is not
thought of as `divination' per se. However in earlier times,
especially during the Middle Ages and Renaissance when physicians were
informed by Galenian principles (i.e. the theory of the four
humours), it was a very different diagnostic method.
The vulgar sort are so strongly prepossest (by
reason of their ignorance) the Physicians can
discern (by the Urine) the Disease, the conception,
the sex, the parties age, with many other such
absurdities, that I fear it will be an hard matter
to dispossesse them of that opinion.
Etymology
From New Latin oromantia, uromantia, from uro-
combining form representing Greek ouron urine.
Here -mancy refers to 'divination' in its weaker sense
of 'sucessful conjecturing' rather than 'magical/supernatural
prediction or insight'.Variant Forms
Early modern English: oromancie, vromancie.
Latinate forms: uromantica, uromantia.
Modern: (influenced by the i in "urine") urimancy.Citations
[1530 Agrippa De incertitudine & vanitate
scientiarum atque artium: Hinc Scatomantia, Oromantia,
Drimimantia, dicuntur divinationes seu prognostica medicorū ex
stercoribus & vrinis deprompta.]In Dictionaries
1708 Kersey Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum:
Uromantica, a Divining or guessing a [sic.] the nature of a
Disease, by viewing the Patient's Urine.