What type of medicine is the FOUR HUMOURS OF MEDICINE?

Question

It's very old, so you better know your history.

Answer 1

Pre modern western medicine. Based on notions of the body handed down from the Greeks through the Romans. It is associated with the Hoppocratic school of medicine.

The idea was the functioning of the body could be broken down to four fluid types Yellow Bile, Black Bile, Phlegm and Blood which corresponded to the four seasons autum, spring, winter and summer.

I find this similar to the Chinese five element system, not in its specific attributes, but in that the body responds differently in each season, and different parts of the body thrive and others suffer at seasonal changes.

Any system of medicine to be useful must distinguish between different organic systems, and the humors, while largely inaccurate, provided an observational basis upon which more complete theories could be based.

Science is a process of observation being enhanced over time by better and better instruments of measurement. The four humors were to medicine perhaps as phlogiston (the luminiferous ether) was to physics. Just a stage in understanding...

Answer 2

It's known as Hippocratic Medicine after Hippocrates. The four humours consisted of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm, which were identified with the four classical elements, and in turn with the seasons. Galen adopted this method and consequently Galenism became popular during and even beyond the Renaissance. The concept of Hippocratic Medicine and Galenism was that if a person was well, the four humours were in balance. If a person was ill, they had an excess or deficiency of one of the elements and the relevent treatment was given, for example bleeding or cupping etc.

Answer 3

In traditional medicine practiced in Greco-Roman civilization and in Europe during the Middle Ages (at least until the Renaissance), humorism, or humoralism, dictated that the four humours were special fluids associated with the four basic elements of nature, that were thought to permeate the body and influence its health. An imbalance in the distribution of these fluids was thought to affect each individual's personality. The concept was developed by ancient Greek thinkers around 400 BC and was directly linked with another popular theory of the four elements (Empedocles). Paired qualities were associated with each humour and its season.

It is believed that Hippocrates was the one who applied this idea to medicine. "Humoralism" or the doctrine of the Four Temperaments as a medical theory retained its popularity for centuries largely through the influence of the writings of Galen (131-201 AD) and was decisively displaced only in 1858 by Rudolf Virchow's newly-published theories of cellular pathology. While Galen thought that humours were formed in the body, rather than ingested, he believed that different foods had varying potential to be acted upon by the body to produce different humours. Warm foods, for example, tended to produce yellow bile, while cold foods tended to produce phlegm. Seasons of the year, periods of life, geographic regions and occupations also influenced the nature of the humours formed.

The imbalance of humours, or "dyscrasia", was thought to be the direct cause of all diseases. Health was associated with a balance of humours, or eucrasia. The qualities of the humours, in turn, influenced the nature of the diseases they caused. Yellow bile caused warm diseases and phlegm caused cold diseases.

In On the Temperaments Galen further emphasized the importance of the qualities. An ideal temperament involved a balanced mixture of the four qualities. Galen identified four temperaments in which one of the qualities, warm, cold, moist and dry, predominated and four more in which a combination of two, warm and moist, warm and dry, cold and dry and cold and moist, dominated. These last four, named for the humours with which they were associated—that is, sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic, eventually became better known than the others. While the term "temperament" came to refer just to psychological dispositions, Galen used it to refer to bodily dispositions, which determined a person's susceptibility to particular diseases as well as behavioural and emotional inclinations.

Answer 4

In Classical thought, such as Galen, humors were thought to be associated with organs. An imbalanced organ could create humors that created illness. The solution was to either release the humors through bloodletting of rebalancing them by their opposite quality. For a fever, cold, etc.

Answer 5

No it is some 18th century quackery to do with "phlegm", "bile" etc. Can't remember the other 2 but Google can be a great help at a time like this?

Answer 6

It's not a type of medicine it's a categorization, It's based on the theory of correspondences - like affects like - (gold is like the sun is like the kings etc)

sanguine, choleric, melancholy, phlegmatic

Answer 7

Was the four humours not - fire, water, earth and something else.
Oops!
Lost my train of thought.
The belief was that all illnesses were contected to these and were treated with these as the basis of medicine.
Last one might have been air

Answer 8

Is it somthing to do with the elements or is one humour blood they treat with leaches

Answer 9

Ancient greek I believe. First practiced by the likes of Hypocrates.

Answer 10

bad medicine, though i can't help thinking in its terms (i'm phlegmatic and bilious!).