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humoral doctrine

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hu·mor·al doc·trine

the ancient Greek theory of the four body humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) that determined health and disease. The humors were associated with the four elements (air, fire, earth, and water), which in turn were paired with one of the qualities (hot, cold, dry, and moist). A proper and evenly balanced mixture of the humors characterized health of body and mind; an imperfect balance resulted in disease. Temperament of body or mind also was supposed to be determined, for example, sanguine (blood), choleric (yellow bile), melancholic (black bile), or phlegmatic (phlegm).
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humoral doctrine

Medical history
The medical philosophy of the ancient Greeks in which the state of health and disease was determined by the four body “humours”—blood, yellow and black bile, and phlegm—and their relationships with the four elemental humours—air, fire, earth and water.
Segen's Medical Dictionary. © 2012 Farlex, Inc. All rights reserved.

hu·mor·al doc·trine

(hyūmŏr-ăl doktrin)
Ancient Greek theory of four body humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) that determined health and disease.
Medical Dictionary for the Dental Professions © Farlex 2012
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References in periodicals archive
(5) Humorism was a predecessor movement of modernism in Portugal.
National Library of Medicine, The World of Shakespeare's Humors (2013), https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/shakespeare/fourhumors.html (describing Humorism).
Christian Hagen's "Blowing It" (Secular Humorism, N/D 2013), reminded me of growing up in China, where some people responded to sneezes ("Good!") and many didn't.
Diseases of mind and body were instead understood in terms of lingering medieval notions: as related to moral depravity and sin, especially when the lower classes were afflicted (Kroll and Bachrach 513); through Humorism, a theory of health, disease, and personality attributed to Galen of Pergamum, second-century physician of Rome; and by Dualism, the view of mind and body as distinct substances.
The term "melancholia" has been endlessly discussed across various cultures throughout the centuries, using the theory of humorism, whereby Greek and Roman physicians contended that the human body consists of four humors: Black Bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood.
Gillespie's most sustained discussions of Mann focus on the theme of "Educational Experiment" and on the intersection of "syncretic Hermetism and literary humorism" in Mann's psychologically pregnant texts (199).
An emptyshelled empty-boned humor, Rabelais could have said, and in fact Queneau reproaches these espousers of humorism for excluding Rabelais from their Pantheon.
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