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Hello, according to an 11th century Arabic book called The Almanac of Health, an old man

went to the doctor complaining of a frigid complexion and stiffness in winter.

The doctor, after examining his condition, prescribed a rooster. Being a hot and dry bird, it was the perfect tonic for a cold and rheumatic old man.

This is medicine by the four humors, which are black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. The idea that the body is a

concoction of these four essential juices is one of the oldest on record. From

the ancient Greeks to the 19th century it explained disease, psychology, habit and personality.

When we describe people as being choleric, a sanguine or melancholic, we're still using the language of the humors today.

It also extends why in the long and convoluted history of medical practice of the could be frightened to death. With me to discuss the four humors of David Wooten, Professor of History at the University of York,

Vivian Notton, Professor of the History of Medicine at University College London,

and Noga Arica, a Rika, a visiting at the Institute, Jean Nico in Paris.

David Horton, the first record we have of the four humours is a book from the fifth century called The Nature

of Man by the Greek Polybous.

What in Polybous opinion were the four humors and why did they work?

Well you've just listed them their blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile and before that

there had essentially been three humors and he invents, invents is perhaps a strong word but he

introduces the fourth humour to line up the humours with the notion that there are four elements,

earth, air, fire and water and that there are four qualities hot and dry and wet and

so he's got the body in line with Empedocles views about the universe which come about

50 years before and Polybises is the son-in-law of Hippocrates, the great founder of Medicine,

and he's roughly contemporary with Plato.

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