Title: Humoral Doctrine
1Humoral 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.
3Where Was This Localized?
4To Be More Specific. . .
5 Humoral Matrix
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
6Medieval Manuscript of the Four Humors
The Four Humors were tied to four
basic temperaments(above,clockw
ise) phlegmatic, sanguine melancholic and
choleric.
7Health-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.
8Sources of Imbalance
- Diet Foods (especially herbs) and drink
- Location Climate, topography, orientation of
buildings (something like feng shui)
9 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)
10 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.
11Cases 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.
12Considerations 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
13Dietary 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
14Some 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.
15Sociocultural 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
16 Great Chain Of Being
17An 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
-
18Partial 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
19A 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)
20A 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
21Patterns 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
22What 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
23What 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
24Why 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
25Dont 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
26A. 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.
27B. 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.
28What 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.
29Two Examples of the Helix