[lit-ideas] Re: Hippocrates -- The Four Humours and Eng. Lit.
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:09:19 -0800
JL wrote
I'd be interested in the development in Eng.Lit. of Hippocrates's theory
of the four humours. It strikes me as chemically or hormonally wrong,
but I understand it provided authors with a lot of material to create
characters, e.g. Hamlet, "melancholic", Othello, "choleric", etc. There
is a three-vol. edition in the Loeb. One surprisingly combined with
fragments from Herakleitus.
Any lead or commentary welcome.
Here's something you might consider. It was Galen (c. AD 129–c. 210),
who postulated the four humors.
Hippocrates lived much earlier: the 5th C BC. He was a contemporary of
Socrates'.
'Little is known of him except that he was short, travelled much, and
probably died at Larissa. The Corpus Hippocraticum or body of writing to
which his name became attached in fact contains no part that can be
reliably attributed to him. His fame as the ideal doctor, and the first
to treat the body as a whole organism, rests on Plato (Phaedrus 270 a)
and the subsequent escalating attribution of medical wisdom to him. The
Hippocratic oath enjoining doctors to heal rather than to harm is
possibly of Pythagorean origin.' [The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy]
Robert Paul
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