and to understand what Hippocrates and Galen said in its purest form. So humoral medicine has this kind of resurgence. Older historians-- and I don't mean age; I'm talking chronologically-- tend to say that the humoral model stops being influential at the end of the 17th century.
So this is an example, really, of how science, rather than being objective, has shaped ideas about gender and ethnicity. Under humoralism, women were cold and wetter and more prone to sadness and depression, and men were more prone to anger because they were hotter. Women had weak nerves under nerve theory, so they were more prone to mental and physical weaknesses.
And more and more historians are accepting that actually the humoral model stays quite influential through the 18th century and even tailing into the 19th century. So how does the humoral model work? I'm hoping everyone can see this slide.
I'm hoping everyone can see this slide. So under the humoral model, your body is created, or predominantly made up, of four humors, or fluids-- blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
our psychology for 2500 years. In other words, you could think that the mind body problem didn't really exist when you had a humoral theory that we can come back to that afterwards. So, what are these these humors? They exist in many cultures. Uh, Indian medicine Ayurveda is based on humors. Chinese medicine is based on humors. Uh, this is
And until very recently, most scholars have only been interested in the kind of line of Islamic philosophy that gets received in the Medieval West. And there's a very similar humoral theory in India, although it's not the same humors, and there's five and not four.
And again, that affects what kind of body you have. And what's really interesting about the humoral model is that-- you might say unlike today, but that might not be the case. Unlike today, your humoral complexion, the way your body is made up, is thought to affect everything about you.
And if you regulate those, you should be very healthy. And perhaps the most famous thing about humoral medicine is connected to this idea of balance and flow, is the way in which they treat illness. So illness tends to be a buildup of one humor in the body, or an excess, and the only way to kill that is to remove the excess.
But they do create this warming sensation. So anything that's hot under the humoral model or creates that sensation of warmth when you eat it is really good as a heating herb. And Contharides are probably the most potent.
the others are they relevant in any kind of way could that tell us anything at all what could we learn about ourselves from the 2500 years during which humoral theory was the theory in the west. Um so very quickly um how am I doing?
successful way of explaining health, physical and psychological health. Now, under humoral medicine, physical and mental health was divided into four humors, blood, phlegm black bile, and melancholy-- black bile and yellow bile.
Most people will have heard of this. Hands up if you've heard of the humoral model. Excellent. Hands up if you know what it means.
Oh, good, so my next slide isn't pointless. OK, so humoral medicine is the predominant way of thinking about the body in the 17th century. And it's what we're going to focus on today.
For what I look at, reproductive medicine, that's not really the case. And more and more historians are accepting that actually the humoral model stays quite influential through the 18th century and even tailing into the 19th century. So how does the humoral model work?
And what's really interesting about the humoral model is that-- you might say unlike today, but that might not be the case. Unlike today, your humoral complexion, the way your body is made up, is thought to affect everything about you. So your strength, your character, your emotional stability, the kinds of diseases you're liable to get are all linked to your humoral complexion.
They're hotter and drier. And this, in the humoral model, is more perfect, so patriarchy built into the medical model. Women are just less good than men.
a survival here and um within in the west there There's increasing fascination with the other you know with Chinese Indian medicines that are as I said humoral the huge growth of mechanis of um complimentary and alternative medicines which are alternatives to the mechanistic medicine that was born in
time however old ideas remained and even after this is Vizelius you know this came out in 1543 a century later the ideas of humoral ideas hadn't gone away at all. Um so this is uh I just want to mention Robert Burton the anatomy of melancholy probably one of the most
sense a whole of human condition could be attributed to melancholy artistic creation as well um and he was still quoting all the old sources which were all humoral . So what was going on? I mean so you really think okay so the new new ideas new inventions but somehow they don't really take off. No again things don't happen quite so simply in
Everything becomes about nerves and mechanics. But predominantly, people focused on the humoral model. And this was a very ancient model created by Hippocrates, who lived around circa 460 to 370 BCE.
But for ease of what we're talking about today, these are my nice little semi-fake categories of aphrodisiacs. So the first few what I'm going to talk about are all based on that humoral model that we looked at earlier. And the first category is hot foods and heating herbs.
For early modern men and women, you eat your food, it sits in the stomach, gets converted into blood, blood circulates around the body, ends up in the testicles, And we can see, therefore, that people know the humoral model quite well and they know their medicine quite well.
each humor. And this is actually astrology as you know many many people still consult even for play sometimes not. They're astrological charts and actually they're all based on this humoral system though nobody seems to remember that. So I'm interested in also trying to bring back what is what are what our memory what our historical memory is
uh representations of even of arteries even of the of the of the valve of the interested in looking at I mean use taking up the old ideas of determinism the how humor's the humoral temperament
without a companionable touch from another person. And the modern languages of loneliness do connect really interestingly with this sensorial landscape, as well as to the ancient humoral practices that I discussed earlier.
So humoral medicine has this kind of resurgence. Older historians-- and I don't mean age; I'm talking chronologically-- tend to say that the humoral model stops being influential at the end of the 17th century. For what I look at, reproductive medicine, that's not really the case.
Unlike today, your humoral complexion, the way your body is made up, is thought to affect everything about you. So your strength, your character, your emotional stability, the kinds of diseases you're liable to get are all linked to your humoral complexion. And I really like this.
And these are another set of images showing the different kinds of person you might be. And my favorite book for describing this was one written by John Fage, and he really nicely sums up how these different humoral complexions affect your personality. So he writes that choleric men were for the most part short
uh representations of even of arteries even of the of the of the valve of the say especially 18th century so you have this extraordinary progress in anatomy but treatment still the same. They're still humoral . There's no real