Phenomenon of diagnosing diabetes mellitus

In ancient Greece, father of the Medicine, Hypocrates, explained the phenomenon of diagnosing diabetes mellitus by tasting the patient's urine. Specify the physiological explanation for this archaic method?

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Under the normal conditions, the glucose filtered by the renal glomeruli is almost entirely reabsorbed within the nephron tubules and not released in the urine. With the elevated glucose blood level, the renal tubules cannot resorb all the filtered glucose and some amount of the substance appears in the urine. This amount is enough to offer the sweet taste which helped the Hypocrates in order to diagnose diabetes and in order to differentiate it from other diseases that is accompanied by the polyuria. These days, the method is no possible due to the danger of contamination of tester by the disease agents possibly present within the patient's urine.

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