2012/01/01 by Jacques Jouanna · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Classical Philosophy and Thought #Hippocratic Oath #Philosophy #Epistemology #History #Political science #Law
paper · pdf · doi:10.1163/9789004232549_017
openalex publication_date 2012/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
The theory of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) rst appears in a fth-century Hippocratic treatise called The Nature of Man, the only treatise from the Hippocratic Corpus to which we can attribute an author's name. * It is the work of Polybus, Hippocrates' student and sonin-law. Here, we see for the rst time a very clear expression of the idea that the nature of man consists of four humours, and that the properties of each of these correspond to each of the four seasons, each humour predominating in the season which shares the same nature: blood, hot and wet, predominates in spring; yellow bile, hot and dry, in summer; black bile, cold and dry, in autumn; and phlegm, cold and wet, in winter. Good health is de ned as the balance and mixture of the humours, whilst their imbalance and separation is the cause of disease. To avoid this imbalance, the doctor recommends modifying one's regimen according to the seasons. The predominance of the humours varies not only according to the seasons, but also according to age. However, the relationship between humours and stages of life is not discussed in any systematic way. Concerning quartan fever, attributed by the Hippocratic author to black bile, he simply says that this humour predominates in people aged between twenty ve and forty two. * This paper was presented on 15th May 2004. Since my research has progressed since this date, I have highlighted new points in the footnotes, whether they were inspired by the audience of the paper (see n. 25 and 40), or resulted from my own subsequent research leading up to the original publication of this paper in June 2006 (see n. 41 and 42). It seemed necessary to preserve the chronology of the work's progress. *[Since 2006, I have published other Greek texts hitherto unedited on the four humours, the most recent of which is "Anonyme, Sur les quatre lments (Laur. Plut. 75. 19, fol. 26 v -27 r )," Galenos 3 (2009), 75-89. Here (p. 75, n. 2) one may nd a list of all the preceding unedited texts I have published in the order of their discovery not of their publication.]