In this painting an old woman has brought for examination the urine of the weeping young woman in the background: the implication is that she is pregnant, and that the man examining the urine is a urine-scryer who can detect pregnancy by 'seeing' in the urine a foetus or some other sign not visible to ordinary people. The words 'water-caster' and 'water-doctor', Dutch 'pis-besiender', were applied to such figures. However, from the customer's point of view there was no clear boundary between that kind of urine examination and the kind practised by physicians.