Humorism
Humorism, the humoral theory, or humoralism, is a system of medicine detailing a supposed makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Ancient Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers.
This article is about humors in ancient and medieval medicine. For the related theory of temperament, see four temperaments. For humors in Ayurvedic medicine, see Ayurveda. For the use of humor in writing or public speaking, see Humorist.Humorism began to fall out of favor in the 17th century and it was definitively disproved in the 1850s with the advent of germ theory, which was able to show that many diseases previously thought to be humoral were in fact caused by microbes.
Humor production[edit]
Humors were believed to be produced via digestion as the final products of hepatic digestion. Digestion is a continuous process taking place in every animal, and it can be divided into four sequential stages.[36] The gastric digestion stage, the hepatic digestion stage, the vascular digestion stage, and the tissue digestion stage. Each stage digests food until it becomes suitable for use by the body. In gastric digestion, food is made into chylous, which is suitable for the 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 blood vessels. In the last stage of digestion, tissue digestion, food becomes similar to the organ tissue for which it is destined.
If anything goes wrong leading up to the production of humors, there will be an imbalance leading to disease. Proper organ functioning is necessary in the production of good humor. The stomach and liver also have to function normally for proper digestion. If there are any abnormalities in gastric digestion, the liver, blood vessels, and tissues cannot be provided with the raw chylous, which can cause abnormal humor and blood composition. A healthy functioning liver is not capable of converting abnormal chylous into normal chylous and normal humors.
Humors are the end product of gastric digestion, but they are not the end product of the digestion cycle, so an abnormal humor produced by hepatic digestion will affect other digestive organs.
Relation to jaundice[edit]
According to Hippocratic humoral theory, jaundice is present in the Hippocratic Corpus. Some of the first descriptions of jaundice come from the Hippocratic physicians (icterus).[37] The ailment appears multiple times in the Hippocratic Corpus, where its genesis, description, prognosis, and therapy are given. The five kinds of jaundice mentioned in the Hippocratic Corpus all share a yellow or greenish skin color.[37]
A modern doctor will undoubtedly start to think of the symptoms listed in contemporary atlases of medicine after reading the clinical symptoms of each variety of jaundice listed in the Hippocratic Corpus. Despite the fact that the Hippocratic physicians' therapeutic approaches have little to do with contemporary medical practice, their capacity for observation as they described the various forms of jaundice is remarkable.[37] In the Hippocratic Corpus, the Hippocratic physicians make multiple references to jaundice. At that time, jaundice was viewed as an illness unto itself rather than a symptom brought on by a disease.[37]