Selected Books on the Humors
Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours by Noga ArikhaCall Number: QP90.5 A725 2008X
Publication Date: 2008
Physicians in ancient Greece believed four humours flowed within the human body--blood, phlegm, black bile, and choler--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 ingrained in Western language and thought--and endures to this day in surprising ways. Interweaving the histories of medicine, science, psychology, and philosophy, Passions and Tempers explores the uncanny persistence of these variable, invisible fluids.
Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage by Gail Kern PasterCall Number: PR 3065 P38 2004
Publication Date: 2004
Though modern readers no longer believe in the four humors of Galenic naturalism—blood, choler, melancholy, and phlegm—early modern thought found in these bodily fluids key to explaining human emotions and behavior. In Humoring the Body, Gail Kern Paster proposes a new way to read the emotions of the early modern stage so that contemporary readers may recover some of the historical particularity in early modern expressions of emotional self-experience.
The Humors and Shakespeare's Characters by John W. DraperCall Number: PR2989 D73 1965x
Publication Date: 1965
In this book Dr. Draper discusses each of the humors, quoting profusely from medical writers of the Tudor age, and points out which characters in Shakespeare's plays are representative of them.
The Melancholy Muse by Carol Falvo HeffernanCall Number: PR1933.M4 H44 1995
Publication Date: 1995
Melancholy is so much part of human experience that it is no surprise that, in its clinical dimension, it has been written about by physicians for hundreds of years, from antiquity into the twentieth century. Heffernan's study correlates views of melancholy appearing in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance medical treatises with poetic treatments of melancholy drawn from the early and later stages of the careers of Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Melancholics by William Inglis Dunn ScottCall Number: PR2989 .S35 1962
Publication Date: 1962
In this work the author discusses the Elizabethan view of melancholy, then how it is viewed in 20th century psychology. Eight chapters follow, each on a specific character, highlighting the different manifestation of melchanoly exhibited by each one.
Elizabethan Background
The Elizabethan World Picture by Eustace M. TillyardCall Number: PR428.P5 T5 1960X
Publication Date: 1959
This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is an indispensable companion for readers of the great writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medieval idea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Professor Tillyard in the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spirit of the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angels; the Stars and Fortunes; the Analogy between Macrocosm and Microcosm; the Four Elements; the Four Humours; Sympathies; Correspondences; and the Cosmic Dance--ideas and symbols which inspirited the minds and imaginations not only of the Elizabethans but of all men of the Renaissance.
Shakespeare and the Nature of Man by Theodore SpencerCall Number: PR2976 .S65 1949
Publication Date: 2009
Analysing Shakespeare's historical background and craft, Spencer's 1943 study investigates the intellectual debates of Shakespeare's age, and the effect these had on the drama of the time. The book outlines the key conflict present in the sixteenth century - the optimistic ideal of man's place in the universe, as presented by the theorists of the time, set against the indisputable and ever-present fact of original sin. This conflict about the nature of man, argues Spencer, is perhaps the deepest underlying cause for the emergence of great Renaissance drama. With detailed reference to Shakespeare's great tragedies, the book demonstrates how Shakespeare presents the fact of evil masked by the appearance of good. Shakespeare's last plays, especially The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, are also analysed in detail to show how they embody a different view from the tragedies, and the discussion is related to the larger perspective of general human experience.
Ancient and Early Modern Medicine
Method of Medicine by GalenCall Number: PA3612 .G3 2011X VOLS. 1-3
Publication Date: 2011
Galen of Pergamum (129--?199/216), physician to the court of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, was a philosopher, scientist, and medical historian, a theoretician and practitioner, who wrote forcefully and prolifically on an astonishing range of subjects and whose impact on later eras rivaled that of Aristotle. Galen synthesized the entirety of Greek medicine as a basis for his own doctrines and practice, which comprehensively embraced theory, practical knowledge, experiment, logic, and a deep understanding of human life and society. New to the Loeb Classical Library is Method of Medicine, a systematic and comprehensive account of the principles of treating injury and disease and one of Galen's greatest and most influential works. Enlivening the detailed case studies are many theoretical and polemical discussions, acute social commentary, and personal reflections.
Nature of Man by HippocratesEbook. Click on the title to read it. If you are off-campus, you will need to enter your Multipass username and password when you click the title.
"On the Nature of Man attempts to explain the human body in its anatomy and composition. The content is based on observation and defended by logical explanations of the causes of each disease in order to readily meet outside criticism. It places emphasis on disease not being of divine origin, but rather an imbalance of the four humors (collection of blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) in the body" (Description from Wikipedia)
Click the image to visit this online exhibit from the National Library of Medicine
Written in the 12th or 13th century, the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum was a very popular poem on matters of diet and health, well-regarded down through the 19th century. It speaks of the four humors on its later pages. Click the logo to read this work in English translation.
Castel of Health, by Thomas Elyot, 1541
Click the image to read this book on Internet Archive
Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours by 
Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage by 
Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion by 
Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity Into Early Modern Europe by 
The Elizabethan World Picture by 
Shakespeare and the Nature of Man by 
Nature of Man by 
