Humoral qualities

Use in the book

The anatomical definitions give the qualities functions. Phlegm is cold and moist and is said to moisten moving bodily parts. Choler is hot and dry and assists natural heat and the expulsion of waste. Natural melancholy is cold and dry, with an alleged restraining role toward the hot humours. Blood is called hot, sweet, temperate and red in this particular paragraph. The source should not be silently rewritten into a perfectly symmetrical four-square chart: its own chosen predicates and explanations matter. The same four primary qualities are also objects of touch in the account of sensation, followed by qualities such as hard, soft, thick and thin. Their role in humoral theory does not remove their ordinary sensory application.

Qualities become pathological through excess, alteration and location. Natural melancholy beyond what the body can bear is said to cause disorder; scorched humours can produce another kind, usually hot and dry. This distinction prevents “melancholy is cold” from becoming a universal assertion. The symptom section similarly permits cold-and-dry or hot-and-dry bodies according to the degree of scorching, and calls colour and other visible characteristics secondary effects of these primary qualities. Its margin allows blackening from excessive heating or excessive cooling. Neither appearance nor the single name of the disease uniquely determines the proposed process.

The causal arguments remain contested. Mercurialis and Salvianus are reported to emphasize coldness of the brain, while Piso, Faventinus and Montaltus emphasize heat. Hildesheim allows a heart that is too hot or too cold; a hot liver may coexist with a cold stomach. Montaltus argues specifically for a hot-and-dry efficient cause rather than a cold-and-dry one, and the continuation applies that conclusion to acquired melancholy. The active condition producing an altered humour and the qualities of the resulting material should not be collapsed. Later reports even allow a cold liver as a cause. Burton brings competing explanations together without turning them into one consistent scheme. The terror discussion sets an additional limit on a humour-based account: Hercules de Saxonia attributes that kind of melancholy to the motion, contraction and expansion of spirits, expressly excluding disorder of the humours. Elsewhere Burton reports the same writer applying hot, cold, dry and moist to the spirits themselves, which he calls immaterial, before setting this beside other writers’ explanation through scorched humours. Excluding humoral disorder in one account therefore does not exclude every use of the qualities.

The body's constitution also mediates its relation with mental activity. Burton says a disturbed mind alters bodily temperature, while bodily disorder can disturb the soul, and finds it difficult to decide which harms the other more. The following paragraph contrasts those who chiefly blame the soul with those who invoke the dependence of character on bodily temperament. The Latin maxim Mores sequuntur temperaturam corporis belongs to that latter position. It is not a free-standing assertion that every action is determined by a numerical temperature. An earlier account goes further: Galen is reported to suppose that the soul is the bodily temperament itself. That identity claim belongs to Burton’s catalogue of disputed accounts of the soul and differs from the later claim that constitution influences character. Constitution can also be inherited: Burton introduces the “temperature” received wholly or partly from parents before reporting Fernel’s sweeping theory of disease transmission and its extension to mental dispositions. Those claims retain their historical attribution.

Regimen employs the same qualities comparatively. Foods described as hot and moist are commended, cold and dry foods criticized, yet Crato permits roast meat with its scorched surface removed while other writers prefer boiling. Burton later makes individual experience decisive because diets can affect different constitutions differently. In the medicinal catalogue, bugloss is called hot and moist, providing a reason for its supposed power against melancholy. A purgative described as hot and dry in the fourth degree is to be corrected by cold-and-moist substances. The degrees rank medicinal qualities; they are not thermometer degrees. The warning to use hot, dry aromatic head treatments sparingly follows the aim of moistening. These oppositions can also create a practical dilemma. In hypochondriacal melancholy, writers disagree over hot and cold medicines; Burton says the choice varies with the patient. A generally cold stomach and hot liver may mean that helping one harms the other. Montanus consequently urges medicine only for great need, and Burton adds that a preparation reportedly helpful to two patients might poison a third by overheating him. The later warning attributed to Bruel again makes the choice of heating or cooling remedies depend on circumstances and the person. These examples explain a historical therapeutic logic, not safe instructions for using the substances. The regimen also applies the qualities to a room. Artificial air is to be made “hot and moist,” rendered “warm and moist” by the edition; the following descriptions mention warm water evaporating and surfaces sprinkled to moisten the air. Here the phrase concerns environmental warmth and moisture within the medical regimen, rather than only an intrinsic quality assigned to a drug.

Bodily qualities also enter social and religious arguments. Old men are called naturally cold and dry in a discussion of jealousy, contrasted with young wives’ supposed sexual vigour. The phrasing supplies Burton’s explanation of mismatched desire; it does not establish a universal fact about older men or their marriages. In the polemic on fasting, bodily “temperature” is the balance said to be damaged by excessive practices and exaggerated claims of merit. Burton first praises fasting used moderately and at the right time. Omitting that concession would turn a qualified attack on excess into a condemnation of fasting itself. A later marginal passage links altered constitution to the combined effects of rustic food, anxious labour, fasting and solitude.

Related entries

Humour; Complexion and temperament; Adust; Blood and sanguine; Choler; Phlegm; Radical moisture; Non naturals; Cause; Religious melancholy; Jealousy; Green sickness (future entry outside Batch 1)

Places to read

1. First Partition, humoursthe individual physiological qualities and functions assigned to the four humours
2. First Partition, sensation and rational soulprimary qualities as objects of touch and the reported identification of soul with bodily temperament
3. First Partition, matter of melancholyexcessive natural melancholy and the usually hot-and-dry product of scorching
4. First Partition, inherited causesconstitution received from parents and the extension from bodily generation to mental dispositions
5. First Partition, terrorssudden fear and the explanation through spirits’ motions rather than humoral disorder
6. First Partition, inward causesbodily/mental reciprocity, rival hot and cold causes, and the argument about an efficient cause
7. First Partition, general symptomsprimary qualities, secondary appearance and two proposed ways of blackening
8. First Partition, particular symptomsqualities of spirits alone contrasted with scorched-humour accounts
9. Second Partition, dietfood qualities, preparation and individualized judgment
10. Second Partition, rectification of airwarm, moist artificial room air and the physical means proposed to produce it
11. Second Partition, medicines and head treatmentsbugloss, degrees of medicinal quality, correction by opposites and restraint in drying remedies
12. Second Partition, hypochondriacal remediesopposed advice, the cold-stomach/hot-liver dilemma and patient-specific limits on heating or cooling medicines
13. Third Partition, causes of jealousycold-and-dry old age in a particular marital comparison
14. Third Partition, causes of religious melancholymoderate fasting distinguished from excess, bodily balance and the wider causal combination

In this edition

“Cold and dry by nature” becomes “naturally cold and dry”; “the temperature of their bodies” becomes “the balance of their bodies.” The former preserves the historical qualities; the latter explains their constitutional sense. Elsewhere “temperature” becomes “temperament,” “constitution,” or, in the plural, “constitutions,” according to the sentence.

The Latin calida & sicca intemperies is “a hot and dry imbalance” in Montaltus’s marginal argument, while the corresponding body uses “a hot and dry disorder.” The disagreement with cold-and-dry accounts is part of both texts. The margin’s temperatura cibis mutata agrestibus becomes “a bodily temperament altered by rustic foods”: food is an altering cause, and bodily constitution the thing changed. “Hot and moist” stays verbally close in the herb passage because the surrounding explanation makes it a medicinal quality rather than merely a preparation’s heat and wetness.

calida & sicca intemperies

Printed “calida & sicca intemperies” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: calida & sicca intemperies

An excessively heating and drying bodily condition proposed as the efficient cause of acquired melancholy.

Argument: Distinguishes the active producing condition from a humour’s material identity.

Context: Montaltus’s causal argument; next passage specifies acquired melancholy.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Modern rendering: a hot and dry imbalance

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

cold and dry

Printed “cold and dry” (English). Attestation: phrase.

The cooling and drying qualities of natural melancholy as a bodily humour.

Argument: Natural constitution does not define every diseased state.

Context: Burton’s anatomy; later passages distinguish altered hot melancholy.

Source: original body

Source wording: Melancholy, cold and dry

cold and dry by nature

Printed “cold and dry by nature” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: cold and dry by nature

Qualities conventionally assigned here to old men in a jealous-marriage comparison.

Argument: Preserves the old article’s example without making it a present universal diagnosis.

Context: Burton’s local social-medical argument about old husbands and young wives.

Source: original body

cold and moist · local use 1

Printed “cold and moist” (English). Attestation: phrase.

The physiological qualities assigned to phlegm, which is said to moisten moving bodily parts.

Argument: Links the qualities with an alleged useful function.

Context: Burton’s anatomical definition.

Source: original body

Source wording: a cold and moist humor

cold and moist · local use 2

Printed “cold and moist” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Opposite cooling and moistening qualities used to temper a strongly heating, drying preparation.

Argument: The grammatical opposites are counteracting substances, not an opposite disease.

Context: Historical correction of the remedy.

Source: original body

Source wording: his opposites, cold and moist

cold stomach and hot liver

Printed “The stomack most part in this infirmity is cold, the liver hot” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: The stomack most part in this infirmity is cold, the liver hot

A generally cold stomach and hot liver assigned opposed qualities within one patient, creating a treatment dilemma.

Argument: A remedy benefiting one organ may harm the other; the continuation contrasts reported success with hypothetical harm to a third patient.

Context: Burton reports Montanus’s warning, with usually and scarcely preserved; it is not a universal prohibition of medicine.

Source: original body

Modern rendering: In this illness the stomach is usually cold and the liver hot

Alignment convention

Qualification: Most part is usually; the Latin margin the accompanying note formulates the dilemma as warming stomach or cooling liver without harming the other.

distemperature · local use 1

Printed “distemperature” (English). Attestation: word form.

Disordered mental or spiritual activity, described with vocabulary also used of bodily balance.

Argument: A transferred application within his reciprocal argument, not literally a thermometer reading.

Context: Burton’s claim that bodily disturbance can affect the soul.

Source: original body

Source wording: a distemperature of the soul

distemperature · local use 2

Printed “distemperature” (English). Attestation: word form.

Disorder of bodily humours expressly excluded as the source of the terror-related melancholy explained here.

Argument: The negative contrasts humoral disorder with agitation, movement, contraction and expansion of spirits.

Context: Hercules de Saxonia’s local explanation of this kind of melancholy; elsewhere he uses qualities of spirits, so this does not amount to rejection of all qualitative physiology.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: not from any distemperature of humors

Modern rendering: rather than any disorder of the humours

Alignment convention

Qualification: The negative is essential; the original margin the accompanying note separately says non ab intemperie, with spirits’ motions as the alternative.

distemperature · local use 3

Printed “distemperature” (English). Attestation: word form.

A disordered balance assigned to spirits alone, especially animal spirits, rather than to the gross humours.

Argument: Hot, cold, dry and moist are applied even within the reported immaterial-spirit explanation; qualities are not confined to fluids.

Context: Hercules de Saxonia’s attributed explanation, immediately contrasted with other writers’ adust-humour account.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: the distemperature of spirits alone

Modern rendering: the disordered balance of the spirits alone

Alignment convention

Qualification: Both the recipient spirits and the restrictive alone must be retained.

distempered

Printed “distempered” (English). Attestation: word form.

Bodily balance impaired by more natural melancholy than the body can bear.

Argument: An ordinary useful humour can cause disease through excess.

Context: Faventinus’s conditional quantitative argument.

Source: original body

Source wording: it must needs be distempered, saith Faventinus, & diseased

first qualities · local use 1

Printed “first qualities” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Primary hot/cold and dry/moist characters supposed to produce further visible bodily characteristics.

Argument: Colour is among effects, not identical with the primary qualities.

Context: Burton’s symptom classification.

Source: original body

Source wording: From these first qualities arise many other second

first qualities · local use 2

Printed “first qualities” (English). Attestation: phrase.

The four primary qualities as objects of touch: hot, dry, moist and cold.

Argument: The same elemental vocabulary concerns direct tactile perception as well as humoral character; hard/soft and thick/thin are following qualities.

Context: Burton’s account ranks touch low while calling it equally necessary and pleasurable.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: his object those first qualities, hot, dry, moist, cold

Modern rendering: its objects are the primary qualities—hot, dry, moist and cold

Alignment convention

Qualification: The paired construction gives the object of touch; first means primary rather than earliest in a temporal sequence.

hot and dry

Printed “hot and dry” (English). Attestation: phrase.

The heating and drying qualities assigned to choler in the physiological model.

Argument: Connects qualities to natural heat and waste expulsion.

Context: Burton’s definition; not a report of measured temperature.

Source: original body

Source wording: Choler, is hot and dry, bitter

hot and dry in the fourth degree

Printed “hot and dry in the fourth degree” (English). Attestation: phrase.

An intensive rank of heating and drying power assigned to the described purgative.

Argument: Degrees grade qualities; no modern temperature scale is being used.

Context: Heurnius’s classification as reported by Burton.

Source: original body

Source wording: it is hot and dry in the fourth degree

hot and moist · local use 1

Printed “hot and moist” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Qualities of foods approved within the historical melancholic regimen.

Argument: The words do not merely prescribe serving temperature.

Context: General recommendations, qualified by divergent preparation advice and later individual variation.

Source: original body

Source wording: hot and moist, and of good nourishment

hot and moist · local use 2

Printed “hot and moist” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Medicinal qualities credited to bugloss as a reason it expels melancholy and cheers the heart.

Argument: The designation concerns supposed action and character of the herb.

Context: Burton’s historical herb catalogue.

Source: original body

Source wording: Buglosse is hot and moist

hot and moist · local use 3

Printed “hot and moist” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Warm and moist conditions of artificially modified room air in the historical regimen.

Argument: Unlike an herb’s inherent medicinal classification, this use concerns an arranged environment, developed through evaporation and sprinkling.

Context: Burton’s recommendation after other changes of air have failed; the following examples are attributed to Laurentius and Guianerius.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: still to be made hot and moist

Modern rendering: it should always be made warm and moist

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern warm is the contextual equivalent of hot; still is always, not unmoving. The English subject it is supplied from the preceding artificial air; this is an expanded construction, not a component-only gloss.

intemperies · intemperiem

Printed “intemperiem” (Latin). Attestation: word form.

A disordered cold-and-dry constitution of the brain proposed as cause of melancholy.

Argument: Disputed local cause, not Burton’s unanimous conclusion.

Context: Marginal cold explanation; the body next sets hot explanations beside it.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: malam intemperiem frigidam & siccam ipsius cerebri

Modern rendering: an unhealthy cold and dry imbalance of the brain itself

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

intemperies · intemperie

Printed “intemperie” (Latin). Attestation: word form.

Disorder of the heart’s qualities in either thermal direction.

Argument: Preserves alternation rather than imposing one fixed temperature.

Context: Marginal formulation accompanying Hildesheim’s reported possibility.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: Ab intemperie cordis, modo calidioris, modo frigidioris.

Modern rendering: From an imbalance of the heart, sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold.

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

Mores sequuntur temperaturam corporis

Printed “Mores sequuntur temperaturam corporis” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

The proposition that character or dispositions depend upon the body’s constitution.

Argument: Its argumentative attribution must accompany the compact definition.

Context: Marginal maxim attached to the position blaming the body rather than the soul as principal agent.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: Mores sequuntur temperaturam corporis.

Modern rendering: Character follows the bodily temperament.

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

temperate

Printed “temperate” (English). Attestation: word form.

Balanced in its bodily qualities, within the historical description of blood.

Argument: Avoids silently inserting an absent moist predicate.

Context: Burton’s selected predicates do not explicitly give the usual full paired chart here.

Source: original body

Source wording: a hot, sweet, temperate, red humor

temperatura

Printed “temperatura” (Latin). Attestation: word form.

Bodily constitution changed through the food described in a multicausal account of hermits’ illusions.

Argument: Constitution is changed, food is the means; solitude, anxious labour and fasting are additional causes.

Context: Marginal formulation accompanying the claims attributed to Cardano.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: temperatura cibis mutata agrestibus

Modern rendering: a bodily temperament altered by rustic foods

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

temperature · local use 1

Printed “temperature” (English). Attestation: word form.

The body’s balance or constitution, changed by mental disturbance.

Argument: Bodily temperament is the object of alteration.

Context: Burton’s reciprocal account of bodily and mental influence.

Source: original body

Source wording: alters the temperature of the body

temperature · local use 2

Printed “temperature” (English). Attestation: word form.

Bodily constitution allegedly harmed by excessive fasting practices and claims of religious merit.

Argument: Qualifying context prevents an unqualified attack on all fasting.

Context: Burton’s polemic follows explicit praise of moderate, timely fasting.

Source: original body

Source wording: the temperature of their bodies

temperature · Temperature

Printed “Temperature” (English). Attestation: word form.

Bodily mixture or constitution identified with the soul in the position Burton attributes to Galen.

Argument: An identity claim about what the soul is, distinct from the later claim that bodily constitution influences character.

Context: Burton reports Galen’s supposition within a catalogue of disputed accounts; this is not an independently verified statement of Galen’s doctrine or Burton’s own settled conclusion.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Galen suposeth the soul crasin esse, to be the Temperature it self

Modern rendering: Galen supposes the soul to be the bodily temperament itself

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern sentence integrates the original Latin phrase and Burton’s English restatement; it is not a word-only alignment.

temperature · local use 3

Printed “temperature” (English). Attestation: word form.

Bodily constitution said to be inherited wholly or partly from parents.

Argument: Introduces a constitutional cause treated as hereditary, followed by sweeping father-to-son transmission claims.

Context: Burton reports Fernel’s account; this is historical generation theory and not modern genetics.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: our temperature, in whole or part, which we receive from our Parents

Modern rendering: the constitution, wholly or partly, that we receive from our parents

Alignment convention

Qualification: The whole phrase preserves the in-whole-or-part qualification.

temperatures

Printed “temperatures” (English). Attestation: word form.

Individual bodily constitutions that help make the same diet helpful to one person and harmful to another.

Argument: Plural denotes persons’ differing balances, not degrees of heat.

Context: Burton’s concluding advice to observe individual effects.

Source: original body

Source wording: palats, humours, and temperatures