Four Humours’ Influence on Early Medicine
After the first millennium, Hippocrates’ and later Galen’s perfected theory of the four humours had a great influence on medicine. However flawed, this theory sparked curiosity and did lead to some medical breakthroughs.
It’s worth jumping back a few centuries to take a look at the fathers of modern medicine and some interesting facts about how Humourism impacted and inspired medical thinking.
Hippocrates and the theory of four humours
Hippocrates, often considered the father medicine, has been credited with the development of the theory of the four humours. Humorism gained more popularity later on through the writings of Galen and Empedocles who expanded on the theory, to include the four seasons and the four fundamental elements.
This theory dominated medicine and pharmacy for hundreds of years, despite having been disproven by many doctors and scientists since it’s development.
The theory of the four humours was based around the idea that the body had humours, which were liquids — too much or too little of any of these were the cause of all ailments. The four liquids were Yellow Bile, Black Bile, Blood and Phlegm — and these were also associated with specific body parts.
All diseases had a material cause
Humorists believed that all diseases and illnesses had some material cause. Hippocrates had suggested that epilepsy, which was also known as the ‘sacred disease’ was caused by excess phlegm — not a possession from spirits, which the belief system of that time would have suggested.
He suggested that epilepsy was actually caused by phlegm blocking the air passages, and the seizures were a result of a person’s body just struggling to avoid strangulation.
He may not have been right, but it was a step in the direction of using scientific thinking, rather than a mystical phenomenon to answer questions as to why certain ailments afflict certain people and what their causes are.
Christianity and science
As expected, during the start of the 2nd millennium of the Christian era, religion largely influenced all aspects of life — and healing the sick was no different. Very few Christian scholars paid any attention to the scientific sphere, but there were a few who did try to find a way of marrying the two.
Hildegard of Bingen, the abbess of her convent, contributed to the medical world with a combination of spiritual visions and the science of the day — which was, of course, the four humours. She claimed that the imbalance of the humours in the human body had its roots in the Garden of Eden when Adam ate the apple. As a result, the harmony of the humours was lost forever.
This might sound a little crazy, but it was Hildegard who gave women’s health a foothold in the scientific community, founded a clinic in her convent and helped a lot of people, particularly women, throughout her lifetime. Women’s health was often ignored or misunderstood, as doctors were men. She led the way for women’s health to be viewed through a scientific scope, rather than just being witchcraft or some other spiritual phenomenon.
Bloodletting
Bloodletting was mainly based on the theory of the four humours. As previously mentioned, if there was too much of a humour or too little of a humour, it caused a person to be ill.
When people had fevers, for example, it was decided that it meant that they had too much blood. (Keep in mind, that Blood in the four humours is also associated with heat). One of the solutions for having too much blood was bloodletting — the draining of blood from a person’s body.
There were many different methods throughout medical history that were used to draw blood from patient’s bodies. These include natural methods, like attaching leeches to a person’s body, to the development of machines that helped to cut the skin and allow some blood to drain.
The amount of blood that was drained was measured by setting a bowl under the body part — this bowl had marks inside, similar to a measuring cup we now use in the kitchen. This ensured that people weren’t being drained of too much blood, and I suppose also that they were being drained of enough blood.
Pharmacy or chemist windows
Depending on where you live, the shop that dispenses medication is called a pharmacy or chemist. In Victorian times, these pharmacies or chemists had large glass jars, often beautifully shaped, in their windows. More often than not, there would be four jars, each one with colourful liquid inside which, as you may have guessed, represented the colours of the four humours.
The richness or likeness of the colours in these glass jars would have demonstrated, to potential patients, the skill of the chemist.
Keep in mind, pharmacists or chemists were actually responsible for making the medication that they dispensed and also had the opportunity to invent new products for their customers. So it was very important for people who were sick to go to a chemist that could demonstrate their skill from the window.
The four humours made a lasting impression
The Four Humours may not seem so valuable today, but they inspired so much of our medical history. Although proven wrong so many times over, it still persisted to be the main scientific thought when it came to the medical field for hundreds of years.
We may look at Galen’s perfected theory of the four humours and think it’s a bit silly, but it helped to retain the medical core practice of scientific methodology, unlike some other sciences that fell to the ways of mythology, metaphysics and the like.
Considering the information and challenges of the time, it’s pretty impressive that Hippocrates and later Galen were able to create such a lasting theory that shaped medicine for generations. When it comes to medicine, there was, and still is, a lot of trial and error to get to where we are today.
