So, since the middle ages, and for the long time afterwards, staple of medicine was the four humors, but was this "four humors theory" able to cure at least one disease?
The belief was that there were four humors at play in the body – blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile – which corresponded to the four elements and could be classified as various combinations of hot, dry, wet, and cold. Illness arose as a result of these humors becoming imbalanced. People’s temperaments were based on their own balance of humors, and were therefore sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic. Humors were also tied to sex, with men being hot and dry, and women cold and wet.
It show us is that medieval medical theory was all about mindless drawing on classical authorities and expanding from there, (as were almost all areas of thought) without asking the question "does it work?"
The belief was that there were four humors at play in the body – blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile – which corresponded to the four elements and could be classified as various combinations of hot, dry, wet, and cold. Illness arose as a result of these humors becoming imbalanced. People’s temperaments were based on their own balance of humors, and were therefore sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic. Humors were also tied to sex, with men being hot and dry, and women cold and wet.
It show us is that medieval medical theory was all about mindless drawing on classical authorities and expanding from there, (as were almost all areas of thought) without asking the question "does it work?"
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
