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Ancient Medical Practices: Humorism

  • Writer: Signa
    Signa
  • 12 hours ago
  • 2 min read

The concept of the Four Humors dates back to ancient Greece, with some people suggesting that it may be older than that. Hippocrates is usually credited as being the first to fully develop the theory. The theory is that the human body consists of four substances: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The word humor comes from Greek and translates as juice or sap. Each substance has characteristics ascribed to it, and an imbalance of humors was considered to be the cause of various physical and mental health conditions. Blood was hot and wet, yellow bile was hot and dry. black bile was cold and dry, and phlegm was cold and wet. Treatments for medical conditions were therefore aimed at balancing these four humors. I'm sure you've probably heard of blood-letting, but if not, blood-letting or phlebotomy was a medical procedure where blood was purposefully removed from the body. We still do this today, though thankfully, it is in the form of blood tests and donations rather than to balance bodily fluids. It can also be used to treat certain blood disorders, but we're not here to learn about modern medicine.


I plan to find what Hippocrates and Greco-Roman philosopher and physician Galen wrote about the four humurs, and when I do I'll be sure to update this, admittedly short, article with more information.


Signa's Thoughts


In an article on Menstruation, Helen King writes, "Parmenides and others apparently believed, in contrast, that women were the hotter sex, since they clearly have more blood and blood is humorally hot and wet." This got me thinking, and the next part of the excerpt that I read confirmed my theory. "Mature women's bodies, being wetter and softer than those of men, absorbed a greater amount of fluid from their diet and, due to women's supposedly less active lifestyle, this would accumulate in the body (e.g. Hippoc.Mul. 1. 1). The excess needed to be evacuated both regularly—the most common terms for the menses translate as ‘monthlies’—and heavily, the expected blood loss being about half a litre (nearly one pint) over two to three days"


Apparently, those of us who menstruate do so because we have too much blood, good to know. Do you want to know where my train of thought went after this?


Mature women have more blood. Having an excess of blood would lead to one being Sanguine (one of the four temperaments. Oh gosh, there's another blog post.) People who were Sanguine were jolly, energetic and social. When I think of jolly, energetic and social older women I imagine someone like Mrs Claus with rosy red cheeks. It's not too much of a stretch to say that rosy red cheeks were probably seen as a sign of having an excess of blood, and suddenly, if you squint real hard, you can kind of see where the link between having excess blood and being jolly would start to form.


I may be going on a little tangent here, but older women who have gone through menopause would no longer be menstruating and wouldn't be getting rid of that excess blood. Just a thought... Where does it all go?


Sources

Image sourced from Picryl.



 
 
 

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