Passions and Tempers: A History of the HumoursThe humours—blood, phlegm, black bile, and choler—were substances thought to circulate within the body and determine a person's health, mood, and character. For example, an excess of black bile was considered a cause of melancholy. The theory of humours remained an inexact but powerful tool for centuries, surviving scientific changes and offering clarity to physicians. This one-of-a-kind book follows the fate of these variable and invisible fluids from their Western origin in ancient Greece to their present-day versions. It traces their persistence from medical guidebooks of the past to current health fads, from the testimonies of medical doctors to the theories of scientists, physicians, and philosophers. By intertwining the histories of medicine, science, psychology, and philosophy, Noga Arikha revisits and revises how we think about all aspects of our physical, mental, and emotional selves. |
From inside the book
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... animals and humans are composed are yellow bile, blood, phlegm and black bile. Galen1 People's characters are not carved on the clay tablets of their natures unalterably. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl2 1. Cosmic Elements B EFORE HUMOURS, there ...
... Animals were slaughtered on altars and offerings brought by the faithful to monumental temples, as they always had been throughout the world. Asklepios, the Greek god of healing and medicine, was one of the most popular gods in ancient ...
... animals, on the other hand, was never a problem. The blood of other species is less gory and less repelling, though also less fascinating than that of humans. Aristotle, for whom anatomy was an integral part of philosophy, performed ...
... animal immediately becomes stupefied, but neither the motion in the arteries nor that in the heart is destroyed ... animals who then fell quite silent (and remained alive). Still, nerves remained poorly understood: Galen thought that ...
... animal and for its voluntary motions” as well.32 It was partly breathed in by arteries that were part of a network ... animals—probably oxen or sheep—but, as would emerge some 1,400 years later, it did not actually exist in human beings ...
Contents
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THE CLASSICAL TRAIL | 43 |
Hunayn ibnIshaq and the Translators | 50 |
Religion and Emotion | 57 |
Musical Therapy | 126 |
Artistic Astrology | 130 |
Paracelsus and the Magic of Nature | 135 |
Corpses Books and Reputations | 139 |
Beauty Beneath the Skin | 143 |
New Bodies Old Science | 151 |
Diagnosing Melancholy | 155 |
LoveMaladies | 159 |
New Departures | 61 |
Persian Insights | 64 |
Out of Spain | 68 |
MIRACULOUS MEDICINE Western Middle Ages Fifth to Fourteenth Centuries | 71 |
Faith and Healing | 73 |
Scholasticism and Humoural Care | 78 |
Old Convictions | 80 |
The High and the Low | 83 |
Outsiders | 87 |
Bloody Treatments | 89 |
Verbena Olives and Herbal Power | 92 |
Apothecaries Alchemists and Amulets | 96 |
Airs Waters Places Diets | 98 |
Fearful Epidemics | 104 |
Life After Death | 109 |
RENAISSANCE BODIES AND MELANCHOLY SOULS Renaissance Fifteenth Century to Early Seventeenth Century | 111 |
Hypochondria at Court | 113 |
The Black Sun | 115 |
Mind Matter and Metaphysics | 120 |
Cosmic Attunement | 124 |
Uterine Fury and Satyriasis | 162 |
AntiMelancholy Antidotes | 167 |
New Science Old Bodies | 173 |
Atoms and Humours | 179 |
Harveys Blood | 187 |
AntiHumours | 195 |
Medical Secrets and Popular Healers | 202 |
PASSIONS AND NERVES | 213 |
The Sensitive Soul | 220 |
Enlightened Thinkers OldFashioned Doctors and | 227 |
Nervous Juice | 235 |
Modern Humours | 243 |
Mesmerism | 249 |
Brain Localization | 258 |
CONTEMPORARY HUMOURS | 269 |
Brain Images and Body Image | 280 |
The Regimen Returns | 295 |
References | 329 |
Picture Credits | 352 |