ergo@netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) (11/02/90)
In <1990Oct31.033830.12198@ariel.unm.edu> ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu (Duke McMullan n5gax) writes: >More occurred to me during my afternoon "creativity" excercises (ZZZZZZ): >Earth, air, fire and water; in their "classical" elemental interpretation. >Of course, they were based on pairings of the four qualities: Hotness, cold- >ness, wetness and dryness. Forgotten? Not in our language, and especially not in medical and psychological language. The medical expression of this system survives in terms like "humour" (medicalese for any body fluid) "good humour" and "temperate" (both meaning a good balance of the four basic body humours, which corresponded to the four elements), "melancholia" (meaning an excess of "black bile", a humour thought to slow you down), and "bilious" (meaning an excess of yellow bile, which was thought to make you frenetic). And lead poisoning is still sometimes called "saturnism", which comes from the astrological connection between the planet Saturn and black bile. Which might seem all very trivial, except that I often think that many doctors still see disease purely as a temporary imbalance of forces. This is particularly true of psychiatrists; although they now strongly restrict their application of the terms "melancholia" and "frenzy", they still seem to view psychic disturbance purely as some combination of "depression" and "mania". The language may have changed, but I'm skeptical that this represents a change in thinking! -- ergo@netcom.uucp Isaac Rabinovitch netcom!ergo@apple.com Silicon Valley, CA {apple,amdahl,claris}!netcom!ergo WISE SAYING NEEDED. Must reflect positive human values. Gentle humor a plus. Cuties, pseudo-quotations, and jingoistic proverbs need not apply.