* It is the work of Polybus, Hippocrates' student and son-in-law. Regarded by many as the father of Western (and some say Islamic) medicine. 159 0 obj <>stream Prince Hal, the protagonist, is sanguine, as demonstrated by his courage and good humor. By Erika Mills ~ English poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) created characters that are among the richest and most recognizable in all of literature. A specific humoral imbalance would, supposedly, lead to predictable results in the patient. Hamlet's Relationship with the Ghost It reflects the principle of digestion and transformation. i. Death by poisoning features in six of Shakespeares plays, and is the third most common cause of Shakespearean death, after stabbing and beheading. Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark Hamlet is arguably the most famous literary melancholic, demonstrating an excess of black bile - one of the four humours thought to govern bodies in Shakespeare's time. Readers must do their own research concerning the safety and usage of any herbs or supplements. These humors represented different aspects of a human, connected to the four elements (wind, air, earth and fire) and the four seasons (spring, summer, fall and winter). Words by Nelly Ekstrmaverage reading time 6 minutes 16 December 2016 The Elizabethan melancholic Last Modified Date: February 20, 2023. It is fascinating to recognize that during Hippocrates lifetime in the 4th century BCE, a major cultural shift was taking place in ancient Greece. It could make you prone to solitary study, nightly walks in churchyards and the reading of sad poetry, and the more time you spend alone and feeling this way, the more your excess of black bile will grow. Galen: On the properties of foodstuffs(O. Powell, Trans.). Hippocrates: Volume IV (W.H.S. The principles governing the 'microcosm' or 'lesser world' of the human body are drawn directly from the fundamental building blocks of the 'macrocosm' or 'greater world' within the sublunar sphere. Biological and Medical History of Abnormality in Psychology, Introduction to Ben Jonson: Poems, Plays and Shakespeare, Singlehood & Cohabitation: Definition, Challenges & Advantages, OCD Symptoms, Causes, & Characteristics | Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Symptoms, Education and Competencies of a Professional Counselor, What is Melancholy? Boston R.G. Find out more in the Living with Buildings exhibition. Treatments for humoral imbalances were often unpleasant or dangerous, including bloodletting, vomiting, starvation, and purging. Find out whats on, read our latest stories and get involved. Many plants also represented something beyond their practical application and were used as symbols. Analysis: To be, or not to be (3.1.64-98) 2) Heat and dryness give rise to acute diseases, 3) Cold and moisture produce phlegmatic affections, 4) Cold and dryness give rise to melancholy. Retrieved from http://www.greekmedicine.net. Hamlet: Problem Play and Revenge Tragedy Curator Gail Kern Paster explains "The four humors were an early typology for human personality. Hamlet addresses frailty as though speaking to a human being. From Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in Shakesperean interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear by Alexander W. Crawford. The four humours were: phlegm blood yellow bile black bile If the humours stayed in balance then a person remained healthy, but if there was too much of one humour then illness occurred. As a result, those who had too much yellow bile were considered choleric. Though his troubles were sufficient and his task difficult enough to unbalance almost any mind, yet Hamlet retains from first to last a calm and firm grasp of the situation in both its complexity and its incongruity. The four seasons, the four elements and the four humors were all related. She has been teaching English in Canada and Taiwan for seven years. Plus, get practice tests, quizzes, and personalized coaching to help you Disease - whether malaria or cancer or epilepsy - was a skid along a slippery continuum. Hamlet's Antic Disposition: Is Hamlet's Madness Real? Choler was much more acceptable in men than in women, which is part of why Kate has to be ''tamed'' over the course of the play. The Theory of the Four Humours was that these four liquids in your body could affect your physical and mental health through imbalance. (Original work published 165-175 CE), Gill, N.S. Boston R.G. Of the four humors of the body, blood was generally thought to be the most prevalent and the most important. Hamlet's Melancholy: The Transformation of the Prince Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. Essentially, it posited that certain bodily fluids must remain in balance within an individual, and that an imbalance of these fluids could cause illness or other problems. These characteristics include energetics, elements, and temperament, as well as understanding the complexity of the natural world. Sickness was no longer the result of a mortal transgression but was the result of imbalances in the body from a variety of factors, including diet, social class, environmental cleanliness, and the state of ones mental health. Choler refers to anger, a characteristic of yellow bile when out of balance in the body. Come explore. The people of Shakespeare's time did not think about physical or mental health the way modern doctors and scientists do. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Besides Falstaff, who has the largest number of lines inHenry IV, they usually function in the subplot of the comedies, like the duos Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch inTwelfth Nightor Stephano and Trinculo inThe Tempest. The young warrior's choler gave him courage but phlegm produced cowards. The temperament is sanguine, meaning optimistic even in challenging situations, as well as patient, balanced, and thoughtful. English Review, November, 1916. Posts. Yellow bile, the element of fire (hot and dry), flushes out impurities and deeply nourishes the body. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates wrote about the humors in conjunction with various diseases. As Hippocrates said, Grief and fear, when lingering, provoke melancholia (Hippocrates, 185/1931). 'The rest is silence.' Hippocrates, like many ancient people, believed that health was determined by humoral balance. Four Humours. Choler refers to anger, a characteristic of yellow bile when out of balance in the body. The characters around Hamlet are worried by his melancholia. Shakespeare incorporated humoral theory into his work because it was a prevailing medical theory at the time. The four main characters of the two plays each represent one of the four temperaments. This repetition of earth constantly reminds us of the underlying theme of the play. This Humor and madness do not travel the same road. which is generally slow, sleepy, and unemotional, although when in balance, it ensures a sense of serenity and good judgment. The physic garden or patch, would be as important to the household as the kitchen garden, and it was common knowledge how these plants and herbs were used. Strong passions, like the mourning over a dead family member, the betrayal of a friend or a lost love, could affect the levels of your humours. So the play itself is very close to the ideal humoral balance. Cesare Ripa, 1610. The temperament is phlegmatic which is generally slow, sleepy, and unemotional, although when in balance, it ensures a sense of serenity and good judgment. From Aristotle to Hippocrates to Theophrastus to Dioscorides, there are many well-preserved texts by ancient Greek doctors, philosophers, and botanists that continue to support our understanding of the human body and the natural world. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. Melancholic people were instructed to avoid these foods and to instead eat sanguine foods like lamb, butter, sugar, basil, and other sweet things. is caustic and satirical. There were four humours. The Roman philosopher and physician Claudius Galen formulated a concept of personality types based on the ancient Greek theory of humorism, which attempted to explain the workings of the human body. The Significance of the Ghost in Armor All diseases and disabilities resulted from an excess or deficit of one of these four humors. (V. THE THEORY OF THE FOUR HUMOURS The theory of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) rst appears in a fth-century bcHippocratic treatise called The Nature of Man, the only treatise from the Hippocratic Corpus to which we can attribute an author's name. An excess of any of these humors was thought to produce temperaments that were sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholy respectively. The idea of the four temperaments traces back to an Ancient Greek medical theory that there were four fundamental bodily humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) which could cause illness . Share Cite. So Hamlet wasnt always so miserable; something happened to change his temperament. Severe melancholia, what today would probably be called clinical depression, is also the most frequently mentioned mental illness in Elizabethan literature. The Herbal Academy neither endorses them nor is in any way responsible for their content. Thus, to be an effective herbalist meant understanding imbalances in the context of a persons individual experience in their natural setting. Osborn, D. (2015). I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." Hippocratic method and the four humors [Blog Post]. . A Greek-English lexicon. Humoral theory is a long-since debunked medical theory that was popular in many parts of the world for millennia. To cure an imbalance of yellow bile, patients were sometimes told to starve themselves. Herbs that support an imbalance in this humour include plants with bitter qualities, which cool and detoxify the body. lessons in math, English, science, history, and more. Analysis: To be, or not to be (3.1.64-98), Soliloquy Analysis: Tis now the very witching time of night (3.2.380-91), Soliloquy Analysis: Now might I do it pat (3.3.77-100), Soliloquy Analysis: How all occasions do inform against me (4.4.35-69). What is the humoral theory. FOOTNOTE 1: Humor in Tragedy, by Sir Herbert Tree. Get unlimited access to over 84,000 lessons. Ben Jonson. Often compared to sap in plants, blood is responsible for the foundation of life. Like many ancient systems of medicine, the humours, f disease, psychology, habits, and personalities, as well as astrological connections. The four humors, or bodily fluids, thought to impact humans' temperaments, personalities, and health were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Nelly Ekstrm is a Visitor Experience Assistant, bringing the galleries and exhibitions to life. Curator Gail Kern Paster explains "The four humors were an early typology for human personality. Fringe medicine. A quick glance at Google's Ngram application shows the first usages of the phrase come from the 1830's; then there's a dormancy period, followed by a slightly larger spike in the 1850's, with the phrase really taking off in the 1870's and hitting twin peaks in 1909 and 1922 with a . This is how Laertes prepares to revenge his fathers murder in a duel with Hamlet: I will dot./And for that purpose Ill anoint my sword./I bought an unction of a mountebank,/So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,/Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,/Collected from all simples that have virtue/Under the moon, can save the thing from death/That is but scratched withal. These humours were thought to be connected to different organs inside the body; to the four elements of earth, water, fire and air; and even to the movements of the stars in the sky. I would give you some violets, But they withered all when my father died.. [2] [3] Most formulations include the possibility of mixtures among the types where an individual's personality types overlap and they share two or more temperaments. . 2 With reference to this element of humor in the play of ", With Osric he gives way to a bantering and jeering humor very similar to that with Polonius. Blood, the element of air (hot and moist), is the vital force of the body and the very essence of youth and health. If the humours were in imbalance, then the person was sick. "but essential to interpreting Elizabethan drama, especially the late-16th century genre known as the "comedy of humours" cf. ), known as the father of modern medicine and whose Hippocratic Oath continues to bind modern-day physicians to first do no harm, continues to serve as an iconic figure to the medical practitioner. Like today, life in Shakespeares time was an intricate system where everything was interconnected, albeit in a different way: the positions of the planets, the colour of your socks, what you ate. Hippocrates, Galen & The Four Humours. The roots of humorism go back to Empedocles (c.495-435 BCE), a Greek philosopher who suggested that different qualities of the four basic elementsearth (cold - Definition & Examples, Public Broadcast Service (PBS): Definition, Origin & Funding, Satellite Television: Definition & History, Microcasting: Definition, Example & Impact, Communications Act of 1934: Purpose & Impact, Working Scholars Bringing Tuition-Free College to the Community. Hamlet Study Quiz (with detailed answers) Students explore the influence of the humoral theory in Shakespeare's plays. Black Bile. His clothing is grey and black, and very drab, while Rosalind and Celia are in contrasting bright colors and textures. People who had too much blood, proportionally speaking, were said to have a sanguine temperament. Ill touch my point/With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly/It may be death.. At the beginning of a play, the heroes and heroines all have an excess, in differing amounts, of one of the humours. No character in all Shakespeare is more evenly balanced, and no mind more capable of seeing things in all their bearings. As patient, balanced, and temperament, as well as understanding the complexity of the Prince Its a. An effective herbalist meant understanding imbalances in the patient of their the four humors hamlet owners of any herbs supplements. Galen & amp ; the four humors [ Blog Post ] temperaments that were sanguine, well. Taiwan for seven years temperaments that were sanguine, as demonstrated by his melancholia foundation of.... In conjunction with various diseases speaking, were said to have a sanguine temperament in &. 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