Humoral Doctrine

1
Humoral Doctrine

• Being Hippocratic but still feeling good
  about yourself
• Empedocles, ca.492 B.C.- ca.432 B.C.,
  was the real culprit

2
What Is IT?

• This Doctrine about the makeup of the
  Universe dominated Western thinking from
  Classical Greek Roman times until the
  Enlightenment.
• Earth, Air, Fire, and Water comprise the
  basic elements of virtually everything.

3
Where Was This Localized?
4
To Be More Specific. . .
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Humoral Matrix

• Hot Cold
• Moist
• Dry

Air Jupiter Blood Spring Sanguine Water Moon or Venus Phlegm Winter Phlegmatic
Fire Sun or Mars Yellow Bile Summer Choleric Earth Saturn Black Bile Autumn Melancholic
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Medieval Manuscript of the Four Humors


The Four Humors were tied to four
basic temperaments(above,clockw
ise) phlegmatic, sanguine melancholic and
choleric.
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Health-Medical Applications

• Isonomia, imbalance, in the proportional
  relationship of the humors results in maladies
  suffered by human beings.
• Restoration of proper proportions is the goal of
  medical diagnosis and treatment.

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Sources of Imbalance

• Diet Foods (especially herbs) and drink
• Location Climate, topography, orientation of
  buildings (something like feng shui)

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Remedies for Isonomia

• Implementing the principle of oppositions could
  cure humoral imbalance
• Heat could be countered by cold dryness by
  moisture, etc.
• (by complementing excess humors with their
  opposites a kind of equilibrium would be
  achieved or, one could think of it as one humor
  cancels out the other)

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Cases In Point

• If it was a fever --a hot, dry disease-- the
  cause was yellow bile. So, the doctor would try
  to increase its opposite, phlegm, by prescribing
  cold baths. If the opposite situation prevailed
  (as in a cold), where there were obvious
  symptoms of excess phlegm production, the
  regimen would be to bundle up in bed and drink
  wine.

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Cases in Point (Continued

• If this didn't work the next course would be
  with drugs, often hellebore, a potent poison that
  would cause vomiting and diarrhea, "signs" the
  imbalanced humor was eliminated.

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Considerations for Dietary Effectiveness

• Occupation of the individual
• Age of the individual children hot and moist
  youths hot and dry adults dry and cold old
  people moist (or dry) and colde.g., cold foods
  recommended for children
• Physique thin people told to eat moist foods
  fat people told to eat dry foods
• Seasonality winter foods could be hotter,
  stronger, drier, e.g., grain, meat, undiluted
  wine summer foods could be cold and moist,
  e.g., wholemeal bread, vegetables and water
  intermediate seasons intermediate foods

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Dietary Effectiveness, continued

• Gender of the individual women, considered moist
  and cold, partly because of purging the heat from
  their bodies every month men, considered dry and
  hot because they use a more active regimen, so
  that they are well warmed and dried

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Some Dietary Prescriptions and Proscriptions

• Old Men Must not eat much of starches or
  cheese hard-boiled eggs snails onions beans
  pig-meat snakes ospreys flesh of venison,
  goats, or cattle. Suitable are fowls birds that
  do not live in swamps, rivers, and pools bread.

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Sociocultural Implications

• Justification for conquest and hierarchy (see
  next slide)
• Impeded physiological research and advancement of
  medical science
• Made possible the excellence of Arabic culture in
  medicine and other areas
• Related to the preceding Indirect component of
  Middle Eastern dominance in Science generally
  during Europes Dark Age

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Great Chain Of Being
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An Old World Export To The New In The Columbian
Exchange

• Pervasive idea of duality (male-female
  night-day up-down East-West. . . )leant itself
  to the Humoral Doctrine
• Doctrine itself is simplified by dropping out
  dry-moist opposition so it becomes
• The Hot-Cold Doctrine

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Partial List of Hot Cold Foods
Hot Items Beef Garlic Pork Peanuts Goat Avocado Hen Coffee Oil Chocolate Honey Tobacco Wheat Beans Epazote Rue Basil Ice Most Chilis Figs Distilled Drinks Cold Items Rabbit Pork Lard Duck Beer Milk Eggs Salt Maize\ Rice Squash Barley Tomato Lime Pears Oranges Coconuts Coriander Celery Pineapple Potato Cucumber Mallow
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A Note About Hot and Cold Foods

• Food and drink were thought to require greater or
  lesser amounts of cooking in the stomach, i.e.,
  as part of the digestive process
• Foods classified as Hot required less cooking
  than foods classified as Cold (cold foods,
  then, should be eaten earlier in the day since
  they take longer to cook than hot foods)

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A Further Note

• Foods were, therefore, classified asHot and
  Cold without respect to either their
  temperature or spiciness, i.e., without reference
  to empirical characteristics
• Caliente or picante, for example, had nothing to
  do with a foods classification as Hot

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Patterns in Hot/Cold Food Classification

• Hot herbs are more than twice as common as cold
  herbs
• Garden vegetables are overwhelmingly cold
• Indigenous Mexican fruits tend to be hot while
  European fruits tend to be cold

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What Is Its Conceptual Importance and Impact?

• A. It epitomizes Linear Logic
• (Teleological Functionalism, or
• Cause-Effect Relationship Statements)
  X Y
• B. It exemplifies Reductionism
• C. It represents Deterministic
• Explanations
• D. It illustrates (by negative example)
  the importance of the Scientific
• Method in data gathering and
  analysis

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What Did It Do To Us?

• A. It trapped us into a Which
• Comes First, the Chicken or the
• Egg Mentality If X causes Y, where
• did X come from?B. It reinforced
  over-simplification
• of complex phenomena
• C. It justified stereotyping and
• D. It treated the Individual,
  Society,
• and Culture as homologous and
  isomorphic, which they are not

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Why Should We Care?

• A. Reductionism and Determinism are invariably
  oversimplified models of reality. Frequently
  they are also tautological, reflecting Closed
  System thinking
• B. Explanation and argument of the Humoral
  Doctrine type trivializes the importance of
  empiricism, and the Comparative and Scientific
  Methods of inquiry

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Dont Throw the Baby Out With The Bath

• A. Is Teleological Functionalism totally
  incorrect and/or useless?
• B. Is there something that, in general,
• is more accurate/useful?
• A No If Cause-Effect statements
  meet the Necessary and Sufficient test, then
  they may be valid, and valuable

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A. The Necessary and Sufficient Test

• If two things stand in a true cause-effect
  relationship, then X is both necessary and
  sufficient for Y to exist.
• For Example
• Does the existence of a combustion temperature
  cause fire? No. There must also be something to
  consume.

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B. Is there something That, In General, Is
More Accurate/Useful?

• Yes. The concept of Mutual Causality appears to
  be both more accurate and usefulit more
  realistically reflects events in our personal,
  social, cultural, and physical world.

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What Does Mutual Causality Mean?

• It means that X and Y in a relationship may
  alternately, or perhaps simultaneously, be a
  cause and an effect of one another.
• X Y
• This may also be illustrated by the helix (a.k.a.
  Movius Strip) that depicts DNA. In the next slide
  observe how the helix turns in on itself.

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Two Examples of the Helix