Passions and Tempers : A History of the Humours

by Arikha, Noga

• ISBN13: 9780060731175
• ISBN10: 0060731176
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-08-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Physicians in ancient Greece believed four humours flowed within the human body-blood, phlegm, black bile, and choler-determining a person's health, mood, and character. Not until the seventeenth century would a more complex view of the anatomy begin to emerge. But by then humoural theory had already become deeply ingrained in Western language and thought-and endures to this day in surprising ways.Interweaving the histories of medicine, science, psychology, and philosophy, Passions and Tempers explores the uncanny persistence of these variable, invisible fluids. It will change how we view our physical, mental, and emotional selves.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
List of Illustrations	p. xv
Prologue	p. xvii
A Note on Terminology	p. xxiii
Foundations: Ancient Insights: (Antiquity: Sixth Century BC to Second Century AD)
Cosmic Elements	p. 3
Human Elements	p. 6
Types, Temperaments, and Environments	p. 9
Prescriptions and Priests	p. 14
From Greece to Alexandria	p. 18
The Naked Eye	p. 21
The Breath of Life	p. 24
Alexandrian Sects and Galenic Travels	p. 29
Primordial Passions	p. 33
Three Souls	p. 37
Essences: The Classical Trail: (Eastern Middle Ages: Seventh to Twelfth Centuries)
Byzantium	p. 45
The Arab Conquest	p. 48
Hunayn ibn-Is'haq and the Translators	p. 50
Divine Creation and Human Frailty	p. 53
Religion and Emotion	p. 57
New Departures	p. 61
Persian Insights	p. 64
Out of Spain	p. 68
Remedies: Miraculous Medicine: (Western Middle Ages: Fifth to Fourteenth Centuries)
Faith and Healing	p. 73
Scholasticism and Humoural Care	p. 78
Old Convictions	p. 80
The High and the Low	p. 83
Outsiders	p. 87
Bloody Treatments	p. 89
Verbena, Olives, and Herbal Power	p. 92
Apothecaries, Alchemists, and Amulets	p. 96
Airs, Waters, Places, Diets	p. 98
Fearful Epidemics	p. 104
Life After Death	p. 109
Harmonies: Renaissance Bodies and Melancholy Souls: (Renaissance: Fifteenth Century to Early Seventeenth Century)
Hypochondria at Court	p. 113
The Black Sun	p. 115
Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics	p. 120
Cosmic Attunement	p. 124
Musical Therapy	p. 126
Artistic Astrology	p. 130
Paracelsus and the Magic of Nature	p. 135
Corpses, Books, and Reputations	p. 139
Beauty Beneath the Skin	p. 143
New Bodies, Old Science	p. 151
Diagnosing Melancholy	p. 155
Love-Maladies	p. 159
Uterine Fury and Satyriasis	p. 162
Anti-Melancholy Antidotes	p. 167
Nature: Of Blood, Airs, and Reasons: (Scientific Revolution: Seventeenth Century)
New Science, Old Bodies	p. 173
Campanella's Heavens and Galileo's Revolutions	p. 175
Atoms and Humours	p. 179
From Spirits to Circulation	p. 183
Harvey's Blood	p. 187
Cartesian Souls	p. 191
Anti-Humours	p. 195
Empiricism	p. 199
Medical Secrets and Popular Healers	p. 202
Transfusions and Confusions	p. 207
Brain: Passions and Nerves: (The Making of Modernity: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries)
Cartesian Humours	p. 215
The Physiological Self	p. 217
The Sensitive Soul	p. 220
Introducing "Neurologie"	p. 223
Enlightened Thinkers, Old-Fashioned Doctors, and the Embodied Mind	p. 227
Of Mechanism and Vitalism	p. 231
Nervous Juice	p. 235
The Material Soul	p. 238
Modern Humours	p. 243
Mental Illness	p. 246
Mesmerism	p. 249
The Birth of Psychiatry	p. 253
Brain Localization	p. 258
Hypnosis, Hysterics, Neurosis	p. 263
Science: Contemporary Humours: (Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries)
The Neurological Self	p. 271
The Pharmaceutical Self	p. 274
Brain Images and Body Image	p. 280
The Emotional Self	p. 282
New Temperaments	p. 287
Mind Over Matter	p. 291
The Regimen Returns	p. 295
Full Circle	p. 301
Endnotes	p. 307
References	p. 329
Picture Credits	p. 352
Index	p. 353
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