Paper
Human Types in Relation to Medicine
Published Mar 1, 1927 · R. Bean
The American Naturalist
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Abstract
HUMAN types have been of interest to men of medicine at least since the time of the Greeks. The four humors of the Hippocratic School (1), yellow bile, phlegm, black bile and blood, were related to the four elements of Aristotle (20), fire, water, earth and air, respectively. The humor choler, or yellow bile, or fire, was described as hot and dry, begotten of the hotter parts of the chyle and gathered to the gall. It was supposed to help the natural head and senses. The humor phlegmatic, or phlegm or water, was described as cold and moist, begotten of the colder parts of the chyle in the liver. His office is to moisten the members of the body. The humor melancholy, black bile or earth, was described as cold and dry, thick, black and sour, begotten of the more feculent part of the nourishment and purged from the spleen. It is a bridle of the two hot humors, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood and nourishing the bones. The humor sanguine, blood or air, was described as a hot, sweet-tempered, red humor, prepared in the meseraic veins, and made of the most translucent part of the bile in the liver, whose office is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and color, being dispensed through every part of it, and from it spirits (air) are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards in the arteries are communicated to other parts. Aristotle (20) studied and taught physiognomy, which in original Greek means interpreter of nature, and the physicians Hippocrates and Galen (1) believed that the
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