medicine
The Four Humours
χυμοί (αἷμα, φλέγμα, ξανθὴ χολή, μέλαινα χολή)
Health is the right blend of four bodily fluids — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — and disease is their imbalance.
Humoral theory holds that the body is made of four humours — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — whose proper mixture (krasis) is health and whose excess, shortage, or separation is disease. Its clearest early statement is the Hippocratic treatise 'On the Nature of Man' (late 5th c. BCE), traditionally credited to Hippocrates' son-in-law Polybus, which linked the humours to the elements and the seasons. Galen (2nd c. CE) later wove the scheme into a full doctrine of temperaments, and this framework dominated medicine across the Greek, Islamic, and European worlds into the 19th century.
Where this idea shows up
4 Greek sourcesWhere to read it
- De natura hominis370 BCEHippocrates· Kos
- De humoribus370 BCEHippocrates· Kos
- Aphorismi370 BCEHippocrates· Kos
- Galen· Rome