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The four humors were four bodily fluids: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. According to the humoral theory, first adopted by ancient Greeks, illnesses were caused by imbalances in the humors. This eventually led some doctors to try to correct these imbalances, through methods like bleeding patients. While the four-humor theory guided medicine for centuries, it was ultimately replaced by germ theory in the mid-1800s.
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Humors Term Timeline in The Great Influenza
The timeline below shows where the term Humors appears in The Great Influenza. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...but written by a group of people) introduced the concept of four bodily fluids, aka “humors”: blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile.
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The four humors theory of medicine seemed to make sense from a logical perspective. For example, coughs are...
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...years for medicine’s next big advance. A man named Galen helped to make the four humors theory more systematic, augmenting his research with animal dissections and inspections of wounded gladiators. Galen’s...
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