Humor according to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that
determined man's health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated
that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile,
and yellow bile) resulted in pain and disease, and that good health
was achieved through a balance of the four humors; he suggested
that the glands had a controlling effect on this balance.
For many centuries this idea was held as the basis of medicine
and was much elaborated. Galen introduced a new aspect, that of
four basic temperaments reflecting the humors: the sanguine, buoyant
type; the phlegmatic, sluggish type; the choleric, quick-tempered
type; and the melancholic, dejected type. In time any personality
aberration or eccentricity was referred to as a humor.
In literature, a humor character was one in whom a single passion
predominated; this interpretation was especially popular in Elizabethan
and other Renaissance literature. One of the most comprehensive
treatments of the subject was the Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert
Burton. The theory found its strongest advocates among the comedy
writers, notably Ben Jonson and his followers, who used humor
characters to illustrate various modes of irrational and immoral
behavior. In medicine, the theory lost favor in the 19th cent.
after the German Rudolf Virchow presented his cellular pathology.
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