Ancient Humors
Woodcut from Physiognomische Fragmente by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1775
Ancient medical practitioners believed that a healthy body had a balance of four essential fluids, also known as humors (from Latin humere: to be wet, which also gave us the word humid). Those humors were blood, yellow bile (aka choler), black bile, and phlegm. Each humor was associated with a season and an element (air, water, fire, and earth). An imbalance of humors was thought to cause a change in temperament or worse.
Thankfully, we have come a long way from that theory about the human body. We no longer use that method to diagnose people’s conditions, though the terms live on in the language by being used as metaphors.
Source:Wordsmith.org
