HIST 2102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Trepanning, Everyday Health, Humorism
Document Summary
This was in place from classical greece to about 100 years ago. Medicine as such was nothing like what we consider medicine to be today. This was a theory that was central to medicine from antiquity to the 19th century. The world humoral comes from the world humour", which meant fluid, or liquid. The humours were thus fluids in the body. The human body was believed to contain four humours, each of which corresponded to its own personality and temperament. If you had an overabundance of black bile, you were more likely to be melancholy. You were believed to be more likely to be extroverted or social. If you are this you were more likely to be laid back. All of these characteristic that accompanies the humours were what made up your constitution. If you had a good constitution, you"re healthy, if it was bad, it was unhealthy.
