Passions and Tempers

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 comple...