Four Humours

• Blood

  Cure - bloodletting, eating meat, drinking wed wine

  Association - spring + air
• Yellow Bile


  Cure - purging or change diet

  association - summer + fire
• Hippocrates


  Believed people were ill due to the in-balance of their humours

  also known as humourism

  Believed pain occurs that different foods and seasons would also effect the humours to keep everything in moderation and balanced
• Every doctor had a chart saying which illness was caused by which humour. This was used alongside a zodiac chart which showed the best time to treat illness, plan operation or herbs needed.
• Winter - Phlegm was produced more in winter therefore knocking the body out of balance, a doctor would then restore the balance
• Spring - if a patient was too feverish and ill this was because they had too much blood
• Greek doctors used the four humours as a basis for their diagnosis
• Influenced medicine until the 1800s