Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours

This history of the four humours "may excite passions and tempers . . . as a good work of intellectual history should. You will learn a lot from its pages." (Washington Post).

Physicians in ancient Greece believed four humours—blood, phlegm, black bile, and choler—flowed within the human body, determining a person's health, mood, and character. Not until the seventeenth century would a more complex view of the anatomy begin to emerge. But by then humoural theory had already become deeply in...