The Four Humors Essay, Research Paper
Medieval physicians had rather an apprehension of the human anatomy, sing their deficiency of equipment and cognition. Most physicians in mediaeval times were philosophers more than existent medical physicians as most people know them today. Much of the cognition they did get may hold merely been guess, but rather a spot of it was due to concentrated observation. Many scientists studied lesions and diseases intensely and one scientist in peculiar, Empedocles, came to the decision that that organic structure consists of four chief fluids, or wits. These wits were xanthous gall, black gall, emotionlessness and blood. If one of these constituents was out of proportion in the organic structure, disease occurred. The instability was called isonomia, an thought which was besides proposed by the Grecian scientist Empedocles.
Empedocles followed the Pythagorean school of natural philosophers instead than the Hippocratic school as most other doctors in the clip did. He felt people must utilize their senses, even though they are non exhaustively dependable at all times. The other schools preferred more mysterious thoughts as opposed to natural 1s. He besides hypothesized that all substances and objects were made up of air, fire, H2O, and Earth in different proportions. His proposal of the four wits of the organic structure was subsequently accepted by the Hippocratic school.
Each of Empedocles? four wits was connected to one of the four seasons. Black gall was considered to be a portion of fall, blood was associated with spring, emotionlessness with winter and summer with xanthous gall. Each wit was identified with its corresponding season due to the belief that each wit contained certain qualities. These qualities were closely related to the conditions of the seasons. Therefore xanthous gall was thought of as hot and dry like summer. Its opposite, emotionlessness was hundred
old and moist like winter. Black Bile was cold and dry, while its opposite, blood, was hot and damp, like their opposite numbers, fall and spring.
Equally good as being connected with seasons, the four wits were besides linked to four elements of nature. Black gall was associated with Earth, blood with air, fire with xanthous gall and emotionlessness with H2O. This theory of nature and the organic structure being interrelated was besides proposed by Empedocles. Besides each of these was besides connected with the type of personality one presented. Excessively much Earth made a individual melancholiac, which meant they were really down and saddened frequently. Too much air was connected with one being sanguine, intending confident, optimistic and cheerful. If a individual was choleric, their overriding wit was fire. They were said to be hot tempered and acquire overly angry. If a individual? s temperament was phlegmatic, their overriding component was H2O. They were associated with being apathetic and apathetic.
To bring around diseases, physicians would seek to increase the opposite wit connected with the disease the patient had. If a disease like a febrility occurred, which was a hot, dry disease caused by excessively much xanthous gall, the physician would seek to increase the opposite fluid, emotionlessness by ordering cold baths. If this did non work, physicians would so order drugs, such as powerful toxicants to purge the organic structure of the oppressive wit.
These thoughts may look far-fetched and extremist to the medical community today, but based on the deficiency of information and equipment of the clip, the suggestions were instead clever. The physicians of medieval times based their hypotheses of anatomy on the cognition they acquired through really basic observation and dissection of simple animate beings. If they had non created this footing of medical specialty, society would non hold the engineering it does today.
