During the Black Death, how many cups of urine were people advised to drink to prevent the disease?

• A. 1
• B. 3
• C. 2
• D. 4

Answer: (C)

During the Black Death, medical thinking was dominated by ideas about balancing the body's humours and purifying the body to ward off illness. Urine therapy fit into that mindset: some believed that drinking urine could cleanse the body, remove impurities, or even inoculate someone against disease because urine was seen as a product of the body's own processes. The dose most often recorded for prevention was two cups. This reflects the era’s reliance on simple, measurable remedies and the belief that a small, regular intake of a bodily substance could provide protection, even though we now know such a practice had no real protective effect.