Knowra Humoral theory Humoral theory Humoral theory held that health depended on the balance of four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. It shaped medical diagnosis and treatment from antiquity through the early modern period.
Four humors : Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile were the four fluids thought to govern health and temperament. These fluids were the theory’s basic ingredients; illness meant their imbalance.
Hippocrates : An ancient Greek physician traditionally regarded as a foundational figure in Western medicine. The Hippocratic corpus contains early accounts of health as balance among bodily fluids.
Bloodletting : The deliberate removal of blood as a medical treatment, often by incision, lancet, or leeches. Practitioners used it to reduce an excess of blood within humoral reasoning.
Arabic medicine : Medical scholarship and practice conducted in Arabic-speaking societies, especially during the medieval period. Arabic physicians translated, criticized, and developed humoral medicine.
Iatrochemistry : An early modern medical approach that explained bodily processes and disease through chemical substances and reactions. It challenged humoral explanations by treating chemistry, rather than fluid balance, as the key to physiology.
Humorism : A medical framework that explains health and disease through the quantity and qualities of bodily humors. This broader framework organized humoral theory’s account of disease and treatment.
Hippocratic Corpus : A collection of ancient Greek medical texts written by multiple authors, traditionally associated with Hippocrates. Its treatises preserve influential early formulations of humoral medicine.
Cupping therapy : A treatment that uses cups applied to the skin to create suction, sometimes drawing blood through small cuts. Wet cupping offered another way to remove bodily matter in humoral treatment.
Persian medicine : Medical scholarship and practice developed in Persian-speaking societies across ancient and medieval periods. Persian medical writers incorporated humoral frameworks into influential medical works.
William Harvey : An English physician who demonstrated that the heart circulates blood through the body. His account of circulation revised ancient assumptions about blood’s movement and role.
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