four humors
Hippocratic body fluids
The four humors are bodily fluids that ancient and medieval physicians believed determined health and temperament: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
Imbalance among these supposedly caused illness; treatment aimed to restore equilibrium through bleeding, purging, or diet.
Though abandoned by medicine, the theory left traces in words like sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic—each tied to a humor's supposed temperamental effect.
- bloodBody's oxygen carrier
- sanguineCheerfully optimistic temperament
- Greek philosophyClassical Mediterranean intellectual tradition
- balanceSteadiness or amount owed
- phlegmaticUnemotionally calm, slow-reacting
choleric · yellow bile · melancholic · bodily fluids · earth · air · medieval medicine · medical history · water · Avicenna · temperaments · personality type · body type · fire · black bile · bile duct · complexion · Islamic Golden Age
- foursquartet, quadruplets, tetrad, foursome, quadruple
- Greek scienceAristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates
- ancient medicinephysicians, healers, Hippocratic Oath, Hippocratic oath, bloodletting
- Humors and Passionspassions, humors, choler, melancholia, phlegm
- medical historyHippocrates, germ theory, bloodletting, Galen, humors
- medieval medicinebloodletting, leeching, humors, barber-surgeons, plague doctor
four humorsevidence-based medicine
Clinical care guided by research
germ theory · biomedicine · microbiology · clinical medicine · pharmacology
four humorsneuroscience
Study of nervous systems
behavioral genetics · brain chemistry · MBTI · psychology · cognitive science