Blood’s relation to heat also made it a go-to for fever reduction. Sporting a “when in doubt, let it out” mentality, Galen declared blood the dominant humor, and bloodletting an excellent way to balance the body. Most famously, Galen of Pergamum used it as the basis for his prescription of bloodletting. Humorism lead to all sorts of poor medical advice. Teenagers were considered to have a natural abundance of blood, and men had more than women. The more blood people had in their systems, the more passionate, charismatic, and impulsive they would be. Blood was considered hot and moist, resulting in a sanguine temperament. Handed down from ancient Greek physicians, humorism stated that these bodily fluids determined someone’s personality. To pick just one, the physicians of Shakespeare’s day believed blood to be one of four bodily fluids or “humors” (the others being black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm). Even the most basic of blood knowledge - blood inside the body is good, blood outside is not ideal, too much blood outside is cause for concern - escaped humanity’s grasp for an embarrassing number of centuries.Ībsence this knowledge, our ancestors devised less-than-scientific theories as to what blood was, theories that varied wildly across time and culture. Our ancestors understood little about blood.
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