The Legacy of the Hippocratic Treatise The Nature of Man: The Theory of the Four Humours

Abstract

The theory of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile)))rst appears in a aafth-century Hippocratic treatise called The Nature of Man, the only treatise from the Hippocratic Corpus to which we can attribute an author's name. * It is the work of Polybus, Hippocrates' student and son-in-law. Here, we see for the eerst time a very clear expression of the idea that the nature of man consists of four humours, and that the properties of each of these correspond to each of the four seasons, each humour predominating in the season which shares the same nature: blood, hot and wet, predominates in spring; yellow bile, hot and dry, in summer; black bile, cold and dry, in autumn; and phlegm, cold and wet, in winter. Good health is deeened as the balance and mixture of the humours, whilst their imbalance and separation is the cause of disease. To avoid this imbalance, the doctor recommends modifying one's regimen according to the seasons. The predominance of the humours varies not only according to the seasons, but also according to age. However, the relationship between humours and stages of life is not discussed in any systematic way. Concerning quartan fever, attributed by the Hippocratic author to black bile, he simply says that this humour predominates in people aged between twenty yyve and forty two.