Most ancient, medieval and metaphysical practitioners of witchcraft, alongside with the alchemists, tended to believe that the individual nature of a person’s health and personality was ruled by the varying combinations of four inner liquids called humors. In Latin, humor means moisture which speaks of blood, black choler, melancholy and phlegm.
The humor belief was advocated by famed Greek physician Hippocrates also known as the Western Father of Medicine and was introduced into Rome by Galen, another great practitioner of medicine during the second century A.D.
The Humors and Temperament
Every one of the humors was associated with one of the four elements, as they were explained by Plato and Aristotle. Each of the humors caused an exact expected personality. Take for example: the four classical elements in Greek natural philosophy were known as air, fire, earth and water.
Let it be known that the personality or natural temperament of air was sanguine known as cheer and optimism. And for fire, it was known as yellow bile. Meanwhile, black bile was related to earth and water was related to the phlegmatic which shows the temperament of apathy and sloth.
Greek Humors and the Elements
The Greek humors are equal to the four elements in this respect: Blood is related to air, choler is related to fire, melancholy is related to earth and phlegm is related to water.
As it related to the seasons, blood was equal with the resurrection of the spring. Meanwhile, the yellow bile was equal with the summer, black bile with the autumn and phlegm with the winter.
Balance of Humors Was Important
It was very important to keep the four humors in perfect balance so that good health and self-being was maintained. Any imbalance of the humors would bring about abnormal behavior or disease. Take for instance the colds that are caught which make people sick; it was thought that too much phlegm was responsible for that.
In addition to that, too much yellow bile was thought to be behind cholera, the disease which has been known to devastate entire cities since the beginning of time. And then with choler, too much of it was thought to produce jaundice.
The humor belief has provided the world of today with a linguistic legacy. The modern use of the word humor involves an individual’s quirkiness and was often seen as comical or ludicrous. Therefore, the word humor within itself meant something which was laughable or even witty.
Source:
Singer, Charles; Underwood, E. Ashworth (1962), A Short History of Medicine, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, Library of Congress ID: 62-21080.
Tom Gaden (1998), Wizards and Sorcerers: From Abracadabra to Zoroaster. Checkmark Books. ISBN-10: 0816031525 (pages 104-105)
Marquis Canaday - I take pleasure in writing about subjects that deal with civilizations in general, world history, U.S history, economics, occasionally ...
