“The pissing evil,” he called it, and became the first European physician to diagnose the sweet taste of diabetic urine—“wonderfully sweet like sugar or hon[e]y.”
So was he literally tasting his patients urine? Yes, yes he was. Apparently it was common practice for medical practitioners to do so.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/11/what-a-doctor-can-learn-by-tasting-a-patients-urine/
