Pre-Enlightenment physicians also believed in the four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.
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The human body contained four viscous liquids or "humors": phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile.
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For millennia, the human body was understood as a vessel for a quartet of liquids: yellow bile, black bile, white phlegm, and red blood.
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Black bile, yellow bile, blood, phlegm: we pledged—to divide ourselves up and played flip cup to determine who'd bust a move to begin.
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Well, there was the humoral theory of the body, which is the idea that the body has four humors: phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood.
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For the most part, the body took care of this naturally: black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm were expelled through excrement, sweat, tears, and nasal discharge.
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According to the National Library of Medicine's blog Circulating Now, the practice was used in antiquity to help balance a person's humors — this was back when doctors thought that all medical problems were caused by imbalances in four bodily fluids (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood), a bizarre form of pseudoscience that endured for more than 2,000 years — and was later used to treat a range of conditions including psoriasis, lupus, and sleep disorders.
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Excess of yellow bile was thought to produce aggression, and reciprocally excess anger to cause liver derangement and imbalances in the humors.
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Above this is a whitish layer of white blood cells (the "phlegm"). The top layer is clear yellow serum (the "yellow bile").
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Galen contributed a substantial amount to the Hippocratic understanding of pathology. Under Hippocrates' bodily humors theory, differences in human moods come as a consequence of imbalances in one of the four bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Galen promoted this theory and the typology of human temperaments. In Galen's view, an imbalance of each humor corresponded with a particular human temperament (blood—sanguine, black bile—melancholic, yellow bile—choleric, and phlegm—phlegmatic).
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Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.E.), hypothesized that the body and mind become unwell when the vital fluids in the body become unbalanced. These fluids include black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Too much phlegm causes a person to be fatigued, too much black bile causes depression, yellow bile causes a quick temper, and too much blood causes optimism, cheerfulness, and confidence. Because of these ideas we were able to move past the ideas of demonology and possession and onto what is know today as medical treatment.
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Other things associated with fire and yellow bile in ancient and medieval medicine included the season of summer, since it increased the qualities of heat and aridity; the choleric temperament (of a person dominated by the yellow bile humour); the masculine; and the eastern point of the compass. Alchemical symbol for fire In alchemy the chemical element of sulfur was often associated with fire and its alchemical symbol and its symbol was an upward-pointing triangle. In alchemic tradition, metals are incubated by fire in the womb of the Earth and alchemists only accelerate their development.
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Theophrastus and others developed a set of characters based on the humors. Those with too much blood were sanguine. Those with too much phlegm were phlegmatic. Those with too much yellow bile were choleric, and those with too much black bile were melancholic.
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The theory stated that within every individual there were four humours, or principal fluids—black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, these were produced by various organs in the body, and they had to be in balance for a person to remain healthy. Too much phlegm in the body, for example, caused lung problems; and the body tried to cough up the phlegm to restore a balance. The balance of humours in humans could be achieved by diet, medicines, and by blood-letting, using leeches. The four humours were also associated with the four seasons, black bile-autumn, yellow bile-summer, phlegm-winter and blood-spring.
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A common medieval belief was that those prone to anger had an excess of yellow bile or choler (hence the word "choleric"). This belief was related to Seneca's belief that "red-haired and red-faced people are hot-tempered because of excessive hot and dry humors".
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The imbalance of humors, or dyscrasia, was thought to be the direct cause of all diseases. Health was associated with a balance of humors, or eucrasia. The qualities of the humors, in turn, influenced the nature of the diseases they caused. Yellow bile caused warm diseases and phlegm caused cold diseases.
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In gastric digestion, food is made into chylous which is suitable for liver to absorb and carry on digestion. Chylous is changed into ‘chymous’ in the hepatic digestion stage. Chymous is composed of the four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These four humors then circulate in the vessels.
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In medical theories prevalent in the West from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, the body's health depended on the equilibrium of four "humors", or vital fluids, two of which related to bile: blood, phlegm, "yellow bile" (choler), and "black bile". These "humors" are believed to have their roots in the appearance of a blood sedimentation test made in open air, which exhibits a dark clot at the bottom ("black bile"), a layer of unclotted erythrocytes ("blood"), a layer of white blood cells ("phlegm") and a layer of clear yellow serum ("yellow bile"). Excesses of black bile and yellow bile were thought to produce depression and aggression, respectively, and the Greek names for them gave rise to the English words cholera (from Greek χολή kholē, "bile") and melancholia. In the former of those senses, the same theories explain the derivation of the English word bilious from bile, the meaning of gall in English as "exasperation" or "impudence", and the Latin word cholera, derived from the Greek kholé, which was passed along into some Romance languages as words connoting anger, such as colère (French) and cólera (Spanish).
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The content is based on observation and defended by logical explanations of the causes of each disease in order to readily meet outside criticism. It places emphasis on disease not being of divine origin, but rather an imbalance of the four humors (collection of blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) in the body.
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Hippocrates believed sickness of the human body to be caused by an imbalance of the four humors (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm). The cure to the sickness was to remove or add the humor in question to balance the body. This belief led to the application of bloodletting and dieting in medicine.Merril, Ray M., PhD, MPH.
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According to Aristotle, the four elements rise or fall toward their natural place in concentric layers surrounding the center of the earth and form the terrestrial or sublunary spheres.G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotle, chapters 7–8. In ancient Greek medicine, each of the four humours became associated with an element. Yellow bile was the humor identified with fire, since both were hot and dry.
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Retrieved 2009-07-12. In the 2nd century A.D., Galen promoted Hippocrates' theory on the necessary balance between the 4 "humours" - blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile - to maintain good health.Elsimar M. Coutinho, Is Menstruation Obsolete?, Oxford University Press 1999 It is suggested that the practice of bloodletting has persisted through time because it is a readily available measure to people of all socioeconomic statuses.
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A predominance of blood gives a sanguine temperament; a predominance of phlegm makes one phlegmatic; yellow bile, bilious (or choleric); and black bile, melancholic. After diagnosing the disease, treatment follows a pattern: Treatment includes regimental therapy known as Ilaj-Bil-Tadbeer. These therapies include cupping, aromatherapy, bloodletting, bathing, exercise, and dalak (massaging the body). It may also involve the prescription of Unani drugs or surgery.
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According to humoralism, each fluid or "humour" has temperamental or behavioral correlates. In the case of psychosis, symptoms are thought to be caused by an excess of both blood and yellow bile. Thus, the proposed surgical intervention for psychotic or manic behavior was bloodletting. 18th-century physician, educator, and widely considered "founder of American psychiatry", Benjamin Rush, also prescribed bloodletting as a first-line treatment for psychosis.
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18 De Natura Hominis (On the Nature of Man) is the earliest known text to advance a four-humor system of blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Galen, though, considers De Natura Hominis to be the work of Hippocrates himself. Polybus is mentioned many times by Galen, chiefly in connection with different works in the Hippocratic collection. He is also mentioned by Celsus, Caelius Aurelianus, and Pliny.
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As trials continued wherein theories were tested against symptoms and results, the pure spiritual beliefs regarding "punishments" and "gifts" were replaced with a foundation based in the physical, i.e., cause and effect. Humorism (or the four humors) refers to blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. It was also theorized that sex played a role in medicine because some diseases and treatments were different for females than for males.
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Ancient Greek medicine began to revolve around the theory of humors. The humoral theory states that good health comes from a perfect balance of the four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Consequently, poor health resulted from improper balance of the four humors . Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine", established a medical school at Cos and is the most important figure in ancient Greek medicine.
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His medicine was based on the regulation of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) and their properties (wet, dry, hot, and cold).Le Wall, Charles. The Curious Lore of Drugs and Medicines: Four Thousand Years of Pharmacy. (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co. Inc: 1927) and Parker, Linette A. "A Brief History of Materia Medica," in The American Journal of Nursing, Vol.
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The medical practices of the Byzantine Empire originated from the Greek physician Hippocrates and Roman ethnic Greek Citizen Physician Galen. Evidence of the use of ancient Greek medicinal ideas is seen through Byzantine physician's reliance on humors to diagnose illness. Byzantine physicians followed the Hippocratic Theory that the body consisted of four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These humors were connected to particular seasons, hot or cold and dry or moist.
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Hippocrates suspected that these states of insanity were due to imbalances of fluids in the body. He identified these fluids to be four in particular: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Furthermore, not far from Hippocrates, the philosopher Plato would come to argue the mind, body, and spirit worked as a unit. Any imbalance brought to these compositions of the individual could bring distress or lack of harmony within the individual.
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The book weaves together Mukherjee's experiences as a hematology/oncology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital as well as the history of cancer treatment and research. Mukherjee gives the history of cancer from its first identification 4,600 years ago by the Egyptian physician Imhotep. The Greeks had no understanding of cells, but they were familiar with hydraulics. Hippocrates thus considered illness to be an imbalance of four cardinal fluids: blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm.
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While Galen thought that humors 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 humors. 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 humors formed. The four temperaments as depicted in an 18th- century woodcut: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholic.
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Each substance is known for having a corresponding humour: black bile, phlegm, blood and yellow bile, respectively. Hippocrates also noted some emotional connections to the four humours, which Claudius Galenus would later expand on. The critical thinking of Aristotle and his emphasis on the relationship between structure and function marked the beginning of physiology in Ancient Greece. Like Hippocrates, Aristotle took to the humoral theory of disease, which also consisted of four primary qualities in life: hot, cold, wet and dry.
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Jaundice (Hyperbilirubinemia) is not uncommon in newborn babies and presents itself as yellow discoloration of the skin and whites of the eyes (sclera). Jaundice occurs in roughly 60% to 84% of infants. This condition also causes babies to appear sick, experience difficulty waking up, make high- pitch cries, or not be able to be fed or gain weight. Bilirubin is an orange yellow bile pigment that is produced as a byproduct of hemoglobin as red blood cells break down (hemolysis).
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In Iranian traditional medicine the excess or lack of warmness and humidity define four essential temperaments. These are “warm and wet (sanguine or Damawiy)”, “warm and dry (choleric or Safrawiy)”, “cold and dry (melancholic or Saudawiy)” and “cold and wet (phlegmatic or Balghamiy)”. The terms in the parentheses refer to four groups of material in the body (called “humors” or 'Akhlat') including blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm respectively. Words written in italic show original Persian terms in the ancient literature.
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Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen all agreed on that, in terms of biology and sexual differentiation, heat was the most important of the qualities because it determined shape and disposition. Disposition included a balance of the previous four qualities, the four elements and the four humors. For example, the element of fire shared the qualities of heat and dryness: fire dominated in yellow bile or choler, meaning a choleric person was more or hot and dry than others. Hot and dry individuals were active, dominant, and aggressive.
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There were two key concepts in his system of bloodletting. The first was that blood was created and then used up; it did not circulate, and so it could "stagnate" in the extremities. The second was that humoral balance was the basis of illness or health, the four humours being blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, relating to the four Greek classical elements of air, water, earth, and fire respectively. Galen believed that blood was the dominant humour and the one in most need of control.
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Sacrifices, exorcisms, spells and prayers were then carried out in order to reconcile with the gods and restore health to the patient. It was not until the time of Hippocrates, between 450 and 350 BC, that rational, observation and the humoral theory of medicine began to become highly influential. The theory of the humours or “Humorism” understood the human body to be composed of fluid (humours) and regarded disease as a result of an imbalance of the four humors: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm and blood.
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According to Unani practitioners, the failure of the Quwwat-e- Mudabbira-e-Badan, or the body's ability to maintain its own health, may lead to derangement of the normal equilibrium of the body's akhlat (humors). Abnormal humors are believed to lead to pathological changes in the tissues at the affected site, creating the clinical manifestations of illness. The theory postulates the presence of blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile in the human body. Each person's unique mixture of these substances determines his mizaj (temperament).
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Despite being a member of the court, Galen reputedly shunned Latin, preferring to speak and write in his native Greek, a tongue that was actually quite popular in Rome. He treated Roman luminaries such as Lucius Verus, Commodus, and Septimius Severus. In 166 Galen returned to Pergamon, but went back to Rome for good in 169. Galen followed Hippocrates' theory of the four humours, believing that one's health depended on the balance between the four main fluids of the body (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm).
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304-250 BC), and finally Praxagoras. Galen (AD 129-216), a famous Greek physician, wrote of Praxagoras as this influential figure in Greek medicine and a member of the logical or dogmatic school. Galen also probably knew of the works of Praxagoras, writing on natural sciences, anatomy, causes and treatment of disease, and on acute diseases. Praxagoras adopted a variation of the humoral theory, but instead of the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) that most physicians held, he insisted on eleven.
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Merback, 38 The ladder leaning against the structure has no obvious beginning or end, and the structure overall has no obvious function. The bat may be flying from the scene, or is perhaps some sort of daemon related to the traditional conception of melancholia. Certain relationships in humorism, astrology, and alchemy are important for understanding the interpretive history of the print. Since the ancient Greeks, the health and temperament of an individual were thought to be determined by the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.
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These classifications are more often used by the clinical psychologists and the psychiatrists. Example: The Hippocratic school held that four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm consists the basis for the four types of temperaments. Example: Kretschmer's classification system was based on three main body types: asthenic/leptosomic (thin, small, weak), athletic (muscular, large–boned), and pyknic (stocky, fat). (The athletic category was later combined into the category asthenic/leptosomic.) Each of these body types was associated with certain personality traits and, in a more extreme form, psychopathologies.
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The treatise of Ali al-Ridha includes scientific branches such as Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry and Pathology when medical science was still primitive. According to the treatise, one's health is determined by four humors of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm, the suitable proportion of which maintains the health. The liver plays an important role in producing and maintaining the required proportions in the body. Ali al-Ridha describes the body as a kingdom whose king is the heart while the (blood) vessels, the limbs, and the brain are the laborers.
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Results did, however, show a significant worsening of psychotic symptoms associated with exclusion of medical treatment for coercive forms of exorcism. The medical teachings of the fourth-century philosopher and physician Hippocrates of Cos proposed a natural, rather than supernatural, cause of human illness. In Hippocrates' work, the Hippocratic corpus, a holistic explanation for health and disease was developed to include madness and other "diseases of the mind." Hippocrates writes: Hippocrates espoused a theory of humoralism wherein disease is resultant of a shifting balance in bodily fluids including blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.
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The Phlegmatics draw their name from the ancient four humors theory of the Greek doctor Hippocrates (460-370 BC), who believed certain human moods, emotions and behaviors were caused by body fluids (called "humors"): blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. A phlegmatic person is calm and unemotional. Phlegmatic means "pertaining to phlegm", corresponds to the season of winter (wet and cold), and connotes the element of water. While phlegmatics are generally self-content and kind, their shy personality can often inhibit enthusiasm in others and make themselves lazy and resistant to change.
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Music was regarded as a powerful healing tune and that different sounds had the ability to create different mental states of health. One of the original building blocks of early Ottoman medicine was humoralism, and the concept of illness to be a result of disequilibrium among the four humors of the body. The four physiological humors each related to one of the four elements: blood and air, phlegm and water, black bile and earth, yellow bile and fire. Medicinal treatments in early Ottoman medicine often include the use of foods and beverages.
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Rhazes browsing urine samples of patients Iranian traditional medicine (ITM) (), also known as Persian traditional medicine or Iranian traditional medicine, is one of the most ancient forms of traditional medicine. ITM is grounded in the concept of four humors: phlegm (Balgham), blood (Dam), yellow bile (Ṣafrā') and black bile (Saudā') .The four humors concept is based on the teachings of Rhazes and Avicenna into an elaborate medical system. Some scholars believe that efforts for revitalizing ITM in recent years have shaped two main attitudes: evidence-based medicine, and quackery.
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Humors, or ‘Akhlat’, are liquid humours formed in the liver and gastrointestinal system following digestion. Afterwards the substances move towards the liver and will be processed again (called the second digestion in traditional medicine) and will form the four liquid humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. The gastrointestinal tract, also known as digestive tract, plays an important role in one's health and it is said that all diseases begin in the gut. The four aforesaid humours, or Akhlat, are supposed to supply the cells and the body organs with necessary nutrients.
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Contemporary physicians swear an oath of office which includes aspects found in early editions of the Hippocratic Oath. Hippocrates and his followers were first to describe many diseases and medical conditions. Though humorism (humoralism) as a medical system predates 5th-century Greek medicine, Hippocrates and his students systemetized the thinking that illness can be explained by an imbalance of blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Hippocrates is given credit for the first description of clubbing of the fingers, an important diagnostic sign in chronic suppurative lung disease, lung cancer and cyanotic heart disease.
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The word humor is a translation of Greek χυμός, chymos (literally juice or sap, metaphorically flavor). However much earlier than this, ancient Indian Ayurveda medicine had developed a theory of three so-called doshas (doṣas), which they linked with the five elements (pañca-bhūta) earth, water, fire, air and ether. Hippocrates is the one usually credited with applying this idea to medicine. In contrast to Alcmaeon, Hippocrates suggested that humours are the vital bodily fluids, such as blood, yellow bile, phlegm and "black bile" (he probably referred to blood composites in patients with bleeding internal organs).
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The Eminent Galen of PergamumAt the heart of Roman Medicine and central to the development of Western Medicine is Galen of Pergamum (AD 129–c. AD 210). Galen was a prolific writer from whose surviving works comes what Galen believed to be the definitive guide to a healthy diet, based on the theory of the four humours. Galen understood the humoral theory in a dynamic sense rather than static sense such that yellow bile is hot and dry like fire; black bile is dry and cold like earth; phlegm is cold and moist like water; and blood is moist and hot.
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Heroic medicine does not have a definitive start date, as its treatments themselves were not new to the field of medicine. Bloodletting, purging, and sweating are cemented firmly in medical tradition back to the advent of humoral theory in the time of Hippocrates and Galen. With hopes of rebalancing the body's delicate homeostasis of four humors – black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood – the careful manipulation of bodily discharge, like bleeding and evacuation, was believed to nudge the body back to its healthy, natural state. The physician's role was always to monitor the path of the body's humoral levels back to normal.
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The word "diet" comes from the Greek diaita, which described a whole lifestyle, including mental and physical, rather than a narrow weight-loss regimen. The Greek and Roman physicians considered that how a body functioned was largely dependent on the foods eaten, and that different foods could affect people in different way. Western medical science at the time was founded on diatetica, the "fundamental healing therapy of a regimen of certain foods". Overweight or being too slim were seen as signs of an unhealthy body, with an imbalance of its four essential "humours" (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm).
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Therefore, the healthier the humors are, the healthier the body. Selecting healthy foods in accordance with the main Mizaj (temperament) to aid digestion keeps one healthy. Excessive amounts of blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm is rooted from the fact that someone has not stuck to a healthy diet. In the Iranian traditional medicine ‘abstaining’ is the best path to effective treatment. According to a saying by Razi, once you are aware of the detrimental effects of a food item you should abstain from it and it is wise “not to choose your desire over your body’s comfort”.
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In it, Helmont shows that the Galenists are in confusion, supposing urine and sweat both to be separated blood serum, and serum itself to be the humour yellow bile, a fluid quite evidently different from it. Van Helmont's writings had a widespread influence on 17th-century European medical theory, and by 1709, twelve editions of Orlus medicinae had been published in five languages. The diffusion of his medical ideas varied by region. In Italy the diffusion of Helmontian ideas was concentrated mainly in Venice, where two influential Helmontians lived: the German physician Tachenius and the Maceratese Ludovico Conti.
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To the Greeks, it meant an imbalance of the four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and water (phlegm). These humors were believed to exist in the body, and any change in the balance among the four of them was the direct cause of all disease. This is similar to the concepts of bodily humors in the Tibetan medical tradition and the Indian Ayurvedic system, which both relate health and disease to the balance and imbalance of the three bodily humors, generally translated as wind, bile, and phlegm. This is also similar to the Chinese concept of yin and yang that an imbalance of the two polarities caused ailment.
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Galen also played off of Hippocrates idea that emotions were also tied to the humours, and added the notion of temperaments: sanguine corresponds with blood; phlegmatic is tied to phlegm; yellow bile is connected to choleric; and black bile corresponds with melancholy. Galen also saw the human body consisting of three connected systems: the brain and nerves, which are responsible for thoughts and sensations; the heart and arteries, which give life; and the liver and veins, which can be attributed to nutrition and growth. Galen was also the founder of experimental physiology. And for the next 1,400 years, Galenic physiology was a powerful and influential tool in medicine.
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Humourism is an ancient theory that the human body is filled with four basic substances, called the four humours, which are held in balance when a person is healthy. It is closely related to the ancient theory of the four elements and states that all diseases and disabilities result from an excess or deficit in black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Hippocrates, an ancient Greek medical doctor, is credited for this theory, about 400 BC. It influenced medical thinking for more than 2,000 years, until finally discredited in the 1800s. Phlegm was thought to be associated with apathetic behaviour; this old belief is preserved in the word "phlegmatic".
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370 BC) described several kinds of cancer, referring to them by the term karkinos (carcinos), the Greek word for crab or crayfish, as well as carcinoma. This comes from the appearance of the cut surface of a solid malignant tumour, with "the veins stretched on all sides as the animal the crab has its feet, whence it derives its name". Since it was against Greek tradition to open the body, Hippocrates only described and made drawings of outwardly visible tumors on the skin, nose, and breasts. Treatment was based on the humor theory of four bodily fluids (black and yellow bile, blood, and phlegm).
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On the basis of its diverse arguments regarding the nature of medical therapeutics, the Hippocratic Corpus could be divided into four divisions or groups. Group I: The humoral theory of medicine proposed that our bodies were made up of diverse fluids, elements, or powers, that were considered to be the basic units or fundamental building blocks of all nature. Whereas, a more simplified and categorized version of this theory is usually associated with the four humors of black bile, blood, phlegm and yellow bile, the humoral theory as presented in Group I of the Hippocratic Corpus is never structured or schematized. Its approach to understanding the diverse cause of illnesses and their cures is empirical in nature.
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The former United Kingdom has been divided into four Quarters: Green (Scotland, the North-East of England and East Anglia); Red (the East Midlands, the North-West of England and Northern Ireland); Blue (Wales and the West Country) and Yellow (the West Midlands), each allocated a different personality type. Each of these personality types is based upon a different Humor: Sanguine is blood, Choleric is yellow bile, Phlegmatic is phlegm and Melancholic is black bile. Each country has a different way of running things: for example, the Blue Quarter uses canals, and the Yellow Quarter is industrious. No one is allowed to go from quarter to quarter; there are walls with barbed wire and armed guards.
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First, the musculature of the intestinal tract is described in detail, followed by an extensive discussion of the form, function, and position of the stomach. According to the text, the stomach is spherical; the stomach wall has an internal lining, which is "the seat of sensation", and an external fleshy coat that is involved in digestion. In order to access the spleen, which was thought to secrete black bile into the stomach through imaginary canals, the dissector was required to remove the "false ribs". The liver is said to have five lobes, the gallbladder is described as the seat of yellow bile, and the cecum is described with no mention of the vermiform appendix.
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Records of urinalysis for uroscopy date back as far as 4000 BC, originating with Babylonian and Sumerian physicians. At the outset of the 4th century BC Greek physician Hippocrates hypothesized that urine was a "filtrate" of the four humors, and limited possible the diagnoses resulting from this method to issues dealing with the bladder, kidneys, and urethra. This in turn led another Greek physician, Galen, to refine the idea down to urine being a filtrate of only blood, and not of black bile, yellow bile, or phlegm. Byzantine medicine followed, though it maintained its roots from Greco-Roman antiquity, and continued the application and study of uroscopy — it eventually becoming the primary form of ailment diagnosis.
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"Unani Medicine in India: Its Origin and Fundamental Concepts" by Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman, History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, Vol. IV Part 2 (Medicine and Life Sciences in India), Ed. B. V. Subbarayappa, Centre for Studies in Civilizations, Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture, New Delhi, 2001, pp. 298-325 The Hellenistic origin of Unani medicine is still visible in its being based on the classical four humours: phlegm (balgham), blood (dam), yellow bile (ṣafrā) and black bile (saudā'), but it has also been influenced by Indian and Chinese traditional systems. The Supreme Court of India and Indian Medical Association regard the practice of modern medicine by practitioners of Unani, Ayurveda and Siddha medicine as quackery.
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From 1620 to 1660, various editions of his Via Recta ad Vitam Longam were published in quarto format in London. In addition to its endorsement of thermal waters at Bath), the book gave advice on hygiene and health as well as pursuing Galen's theory of humorism. Venner explains how working on six "non-naturals" factors (environment, diet, sleep, exercise, excretion, and the passions of the mind) could affect the balance of the four humours, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, and thus enhance one's quality of life and longevity. In regards to obesity, he is credited in Via Recta with being one of the first to refer to it as a societal and individual disease in an English language publication.
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Galen believed in the bodily humours of Hippocrates, and he taught that pneuma is the source of life. Four elements (earth, air, fire and water) combine into "complexion", which combines into states (the four temperaments: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic). The states are made up of pairs of attributes (hot and moist, cold and moist, hot and dry, and cold and dry), which are made of four humours: blood, phlegm, green (or yellow) bile, and black bile (the bodily form of the elements). Galen thought that for a person to have gout, kidney stones, or arthritis was scandalous, which Gratzer likens to Samuel Butler's Erehwon (1872) where sickness is a crime. James Lind conducted in 1747 the first controlled clinical trial in modern times, and in 1753 published Treatise on Scurvy.
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He is considered one of the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic. The son of Aelius Nicon, a wealthy Greek architect with scholarly interests, Galen received a comprehensive education that prepared him for a successful career as a physician and philosopher. Born in the ancient city of Pergamon (present- day Bergama, Turkey), Galen travelled extensively, exposing himself to a wide variety of medical theories and discoveries before settling in Rome, where he served prominent members of Roman society and eventually was given the position of personal physician to several emperors. Galen's understanding of anatomy and medicine was principally influenced by the then-current theory of humorism (also known as the theory of the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm), as advanced by ancient Greek physicians such as Hippocrates. Galen's views dominated and influenced Western medical science for more than 1,300 years.
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Galen, a prominent 2nd century physician and author whose medical theories influenced Averroes While his works in medicine indicate an in-depth theoretical knowledge in medicine of his time, he likely had limited expertise as a practitioner, and declared in one of his works that he had not "practiced much apart from myself, my relatives or my friends." He did serve as a royal physician, but his qualification and education was mostly theoretical. For the most part, Averroes' medical work Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb follows the medical doctrine of Galen, an influential Greek physician and author from the 2nd century, which was based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, whose balance is necessary for the health of the human body. Averroes' original contributions include his observations on the retina: he might have been the first to recognize that retina was the part of the eye responsible for sensing light, rather than the lens as was commonly thought.
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