Humors

Use in the book

A compact numbered fragment sets phlegm, bile, and blood beside water, fire, and air. Another distinguishes coarse from subtle humor and relates expenditure to the food needed for restoration. The long account of moral faults then assigns them physical conditions, while also claiming that restraining their effects can alter those conditions. Its agency runs in both directions: the source does not merely excuse conduct by naming a bodily cause.

A different warning against unfair judgment distinguishes a fault of mood from a fault of character. Here “mood” is the useful English choice, and the point concerns the irregularity of the evidence from which a general judgment is made. The change of rendering records a change of context rather than an inconsistency to be eliminated.

Places to read

1. I, p. 110, entry 9, ¶3Three bodily fluids are aligned with three elements.
2. I, p. 191, entry 1, ¶1Coarse and subtle humors require different restoration.
3. I, p. 194, entry 3, ¶1A humoral explanation of faults also allows restraint to redirect their bodily causes.
4. II, p. 549, entry 1, ¶1Mood must not be mistaken for enduring character.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves the historical physiology, its broken cause of envy, and the unexpanded initials D. G. at I.194. It uses humor for bodily fluid and mood in the judgment passage. Those distinctions do not authenticate the physiological claims.

Adustion, atony, and frothiness

French: adustion; atonie; spumosité.

These terms appear in the humoral account of faults: atony describes deficient tone or firmness in nerves; adustion a scorching or burning condition of bile; spumosité becomes frothiness in the swelling image of pride. The translation note supplies those historical senses. The passage also says restraint can redirect bodily causes. The gloss does not turn that speculation into medicine, fill its broken clause about envy, or expand its closing D. G.

Places to read: I, p. 194, entry 3, ¶1.

Use in the book

Fluid, constitution and disputed explanation

The anatomy begins with a division into parts containing and contained. Humours belong to the second class. Burton then distinguishes innate from acquired humour. On the supplied edition’s reading of his compressed account, inborn humour is replenished daily by nourishment and sustained by secondary humours, while acquired humour maintains the four primary fluids. The syntax and digestive sequence are difficult, and the edition preserves them rather than making this a fully consistent nutritional theory. He does not merely give four interchangeable personality labels. The primary fluids have individual properties and functions, are said to be included in the mass of blood, and can be distinguished from acquired, faulty or diseased fluids. The text reports disagreement about whether the four should be treated as useful juices or as partly excrementitious: Crato insists on their necessity for life. The subsequent addition of the watery material of urine, sweat and tears shows that every occurrence of “humour” need not denote exactly one of the canonical four.

This bodily vocabulary supports both constitution and disease. Material melancholy may be unmixed or mixed, harmful in quantity or quality, and different according to its bodily location. Yet Burton also reports a disorder placed in spirits rather than gross humoral matter, and Paracelsus’s rejection of the four-humour scheme. These competing accounts should remain attributed. Humoral language dominates much of the work without becoming a doctrine every cited writer shares.

The inward-causes discussion makes humours and spirits mediators of the body’s action on the soul. “Gross humors” are thick fluids that clog the body; their condition is used to explain anger, sadness and other disturbances. The marginal claim that corrupt humours cloud the mind reinforces this account. The symptom catalogue allows variations in heat, cold, origin, intensity and mixture, so humoral explanation produces differences among sufferers rather than one invariant picture. The causation also runs in the other direction. In the account of passions, intense or impaired imagination alters spirits, blood and humours, while the body’s existing condition affects the force and duration of the passion. Piso’s marginal formulation joins these directions: impaired imagination corrupts spirits and blood, and altered humours change the mind’s operations. Sorrow is then called melancholy’s mother and daughter; the related margin makes fear and sadness, if prolonged, both causes and offspring of black humour. Humours therefore participate in an explicitly reciprocal account of emotional and bodily disturbance.

The much-disputed connection between melancholy and exceptional intellect depends on mixture. Simple here means unmixed, not intellectually simple. One reported position requires natural melancholy mixed with other humours except phlegm, blood making up half, and little or no scorching. The margin instead says twice as much blood as the other two; its formula must not be silently substituted for the body’s. The next paragraph gives a rival account from scorched melancholy, Laurentius’s objection and a partly scorched mixture. Fracastorius’s proposed resolution explicitly excludes some melancholic people from the praise: too much heat gives fury, too much cold dullness, while a temperate mixture permits excellence. Adust therefore means scorched in the physical theory; its degree and suitability remain disputed.

Treatment likewise does not always presume that one drug selects one fluid. Burton records an ancient view that purgatives affect all humours alike or whichever lies nearest, opposed by Galen; the margin gives the more specific claim that they transform whatever they touch into their own nature. This difference matters for what a supposed humoral cure is said to do. In religious consolation, an alleged devil may work through humours, and the bodily mediation supports the use of medicine for mixed causes. The surrounding reassurance limits that alleged power. These are Burton’s historical causal and theological constructions.

Inclination, behaviour and transferred uses

The preliminary self-portrait calls indiscriminate reading a “roving humor”: a wandering inclination, not a literal fluid moving through the library. The itching humour of writers is an urge for display and fame. When Burton announces that he will anatomize “this humor of melancholy,” however, he specifies a settled condition or ordinary disease. The phrase names the full subject of inquiry, rather than only a fluid or a passing inclination. Political satire makes a state resemble a sick body with unsettled humours, while the comparison of beggars to a corrupt humour gives a violent bodily model to social exclusion. Burton’s presentation, rather than an independently verified quotation from Plato, supplies that explicit purge analogy.

The symptom adjective “Humorous” describes movement between laughter and tears and the heterogeneous fancies that follow. It is not a claim that patients are entertaining. The associated verbs expose an ethical difference. Counsel to carers says to humour, please and divert the sufferer in order to provide reassurance. Accounts of scoffers say they “humor” a vulnerable person by playing on weaknesses until the person is harmed. The same interpersonal adaptability can thus be therapeutic or predatory. Therapeutic purpose does not mean every suggested method is gentle: the surrounding counsel expressly allows “fair or foul means.”

Not all fluid language in this family is bodily. In the Virgilian weather quotation, Latin humor is the sky’s shifting moisture. The passage connects atmospheric change to new mental impulses, but the moisture is not itself one of a patient’s four fluids. Conversely, the physiological explanation of coloured vision uses “humour” for the fluid spreading over sight. Its optical setting supplies the local referent.

Related entries

Melancholy; Blood and sanguine; Choler; Phlegm; Complexion and temperament; Humoral qualities; Adust; Spirits; Habit and disposition; Affection; Obnubilate

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Readerinclination, urge to write, state-body metaphors and the declared object of Burton’s anatomy
2. First Partition, anatomydefinition, primary fluids, useful juices, diseased humours and additional fluids
3. First Partition, definition and matterdisputed origins, material and immaterial accounts, mixture and the contested inclusion of phlegm
4. First Partition, diet and airhumour-producing nourishment and the sky’s moisture in Latin verse and Burton’s restatement
5. First Partition, passions and sorrow, and repeated []passions alter humours, bodily condition affects passions, and prolonged fear and sadness enter a reciprocal causal circle
6. First Partition, mockery and inward causesmalicious humoring and bodily mediation of mental disturbance
7. First Partition, symptoms,, [second occurrence]changeable disposition and variation in fluids, spirits and mixtures
8. First Partition, reasons for symptomsthe disputed intellectual mixture, its qualifications and the optical fluid
9. Second Partition, friends’ care, and [position 296]accommodation contrasted with exploitative mockery
10. Second Partition, compound purgativesdisputed selectivity and transformation of humours
11. Third Partition, remedies against despairlimited demonic power, bodily mediation and mixed remedies

In this edition

“Gross humors” becomes “thick humours”; “Humorous they are beyond all measure” becomes “They are changeable beyond all measure”; “not of the simple” becomes “not the unmixed humour.” The last rendering supplies the understood noun. These are three distinct local meanings.

“Little and humorous nourishment” is expanded as “giving little sustenance but many humours.” “To humour him” is “accommodate his wishes” in counsel to carers; “if once they humor him” becomes “Once they begin playing upon a gentle, quiet man’s peculiarities” in the hostile passage. That longer construction includes information carried earlier in Burton’s sentence, so its whole wording should not be assigned to humor alone. In the sky quotation, cœli mobilis humor becomes “the sky’s shifting moisture.” The bodily and atmospheric senses meet in the argument about air, but remain lexically distinguishable.

adust

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

Burned or excessively heated humours; this proposal seeks an unscorched or minimally scorched mixture.

Argument: Retains the source’s subsequent little-or-no qualification.

Context: One reported account; next paragraph introduces rival and modified positions.

Source: original body

Source wording: and they not adust

bad humor

Printed “bad humor” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Pathological bodily fluid used as an image for people expelled from a state.

Argument: Social purge analogy belongs to Burton’s framing.

Context: Burton’s presentation of Plato’s anti-begging rule.

Source: original body

Source wording: as a bad humor from the body

Bloud

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

Primary bodily fluid assigned nourishing and strengthening functions.

Argument: One of the four named primary humours.

Context: Historical anatomical definition; later clauses describe production and distribution.

Source: original body

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

Choler

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

Primary humour assigned assistance of natural heat, senses and waste expulsion.

Argument: One of the primary fluids, not anger in this occurrence.

Context: Historical definition.

Source: original body

Source wording: Choler, is hot and dry, bitter

cœli mobilis humor

Printed “cœli mobilis humor” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: cœli mobilis humor

Atmospheric moisture in a passage relating weather to mental changes.

Argument: A nonbodily fluid sense of Latin humor.

Context: Burton’s altered Virgil quotation, followed by his own verse restatement.

Source: original body

Modern rendering: the sky’s shifting moisture

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original and modern units are exact substrings of the paired source.

gross humors

Printed “gross humors” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: gross humors

Dense bodily fluids alleged to clog the body and disturb mental life.

Argument: Gross marks thickness, not merely offensiveness.

Context: Burton’s forceful conclusion with Lemnius.

Source: original body

humor · local use 1

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

A flowing bodily substance understood to preserve the living body.

Argument: Base anatomical sense.

Context: Burton’s explicit definition before divisions into innate and acquired.

Source: original body

Source wording: A humor is a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it

humor · Humores

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

Bodily fluids whose corrupted condition is claimed to obscure mental activity.

Argument: Humours are grammatical agents, mind the affected object.

Context: Original Latin margin accompanying the bodily-causation argument.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: Humores pravi mentem obnubilant.

Modern rendering: Corrupt humours cloud the mind.

Alignment convention

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

humor · local use 2

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

Exploit a vulnerable person’s disposition for amusement.

Argument: Contrasts with the reassuring verb in 084-05.

Context: Hostile scoffers are agents; a quiet person is their target.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.

Source wording, Original wording: A company of scoffers and proud Jacks, are commonly conversant and attendant in such places, & able to make any man that is of a soft quiet disposition (as many times they do) ex stulto insanum, if once they humor him, a very Idiot, or stark mad.

Modern rendering: A crowd of scoffers and arrogant fellows commonly frequent and attend such places. Once they begin playing upon a gentle, quiet man’s peculiarities, they can turn him “from a fool into a madman”—as they often do—make him an utter simpleton or drive him completely mad.

Alignment convention

Qualification: The complete original sentence aligns with the complete first two modern sentences. Modern frontloads the gentle, quiet person from the earlier original clause; the verb alone does not supply those descriptors.

humor · humorem

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

A bodily fluid as the target of purgative transformation rather than selective attraction.

Argument: The margin is more specific than the body’s all-alike or nearest summary.

Context: Marginal report of a theory opposed by Galen in the surrounding body.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: non unum humorem attrahere, sed quemcunque attigerint in suam naturam convertere

Modern rendering: do not draw out one particular humour, but transform whatever they touch into their own nature

Alignment convention

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

humor · local use 3

Printed “humor” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: humor

Melancholy as the settled condition or ordinary disease Burton proposes to investigate, retaining the term’s connection with bodily explanation.

Argument: Declares the object and medical-philosophical purpose of the Anatomy; the local phrase is broader than an isolated fluid sample.

Context: Burton’s statement of purpose, qualified by as it is an habit, or an ordinary disease.

Source: original body

Source wording, Wider original construction: this humor of melancholy

Modern rendering: humour

Alignment scope: lexical component

Qualification: The phrase itself is retained; its following habit/disease qualification establishes the local scope.

Word and construction: entire aligned unit

Wider modern construction: this humour of melancholy

humor · humores

Printed “humores” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Bodily fluids whose altered state changes mental activity, in a sentence that first says impaired imagination corrupts spirits and blood.

Argument: Humoral causation operates within a reciprocal mind–body account, not only from fluids to mind.

Context: Piso’s marginal formulation, alongside Burton’s conditional account of intense imagination and the bodily constitution’s readiness.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: humores enim mutati actiones animi immutant

Modern rendering: for altered humours change the operations of the mind

Alignment convention

Edition note: checked in editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note, separately from original Latin

Qualification: Original Latin and following editorial English remain separate; altered humours are the grammatical agents, operations of the mind the object.

Alignment convention

humor · humoris

Printed “humoris” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

A bodily fluid; humoris is genitive singular. The full atri humoris means of black humour, which is made both effect and cause of prolonged fear and sadness in the marginal account.

Argument: Preserves the duration condition and both causal directions; body prose separately makes sorrow the mother and daughter of melancholy.

Context: Marginal proposition cited under Hippocrates, Montaltus and Faventinus; Burton’s full reciprocal exposition is not certified as verbatim Hippocrates.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.; This source group includes repeated printed 96–97 and supplied 98–99; see SUPPLIED_OPENING and SOURCE_DJR_040.

Source wording, Original wording: Timor & mœstitia, si diu perseverent, causæ & soboles atri humoris sunt

Modern rendering: Fear and sadness, if they persist long, are causes and offspring of black humour

Alignment convention

Edition note: checked in editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note, separately from original Latin

Qualification: The complete condition and paired predicates align; atri humoris alone means of black humour.

Alignment convention

Humorous

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

Excessively variable in mood or disposition, illustrated by laughing and weeping.

Argument: Does not mean amusing.

Context: Burton’s symptom catalogue.

Source: original body

Source wording: Humorous they are beyond all measure

humorous nourishment

Printed “humorous nourishment” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Nourishment alleged to provide little sustenance while generating bodily fluids.

Argument: Adjectival physical sense, not comic or cheerful.

Context: Rhazes and Magninus’s criticism of fish reported by Burton.

Source: original body

Source wording: little and humorous nourishment

humors

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

Fluids of a figurative sick body representing an unsettled commonwealth.

Argument: Medical language is transferred to politics.

Context: Report attributed to Dallington’s survey of Tuscany.

Source: original body

Source wording: whose humors are not yet well setled

humour · local use 1

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

Fluid in the visual apparatus whose colour supposedly tints appearances.

Argument: The optical location determines the local bodily referent.

Context: One historical explanation of visions; followed by an alternative involving corrupted imagination.

Source: original body

Source wording: the humour that overspreds our sight

humour · local use 2

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

Adapt to a sufferer’s wishes as part of reassurance and diversion.

Argument: Benevolent interpersonal verb in this context.

Context: Advice to those caring for the patient.

Source: original body

Source wording: to humour him

Contextual qualification: The accommodating verb has a therapeutic purpose here; the surrounding counsel also permits gentle or harsh means, so caring should not be read as a guarantee that every proposed method is gentle.

humours

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

Bodily fluids as intermediaries of alleged demonic action.

Argument: Bodily mediation supports his case for medical help alongside other remedies.

Context: Burton’s theological-medical account, following limits on the alleged agent’s power.

Source: original body

Source wording: The divel works by mediation of humours

itching humor

Printed “itching humor” (English). Attestation: phrase.

An urge to display oneself through writing and win reputation.

Argument: Construction-level rephrasing of a motive, not a physical fluid.

Context: Burton’s satire of excessive book production.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: out of an itching humor, that every man hath to shew himself, desirous of fame and honor

Modern rendering: Everyone has an itch to display himself and longs for fame and honour

Alignment convention

Qualification: The whole source clause aligns to the complete modern clause; Everyone carries every man and the desire for honour remains explicit.

Melancholy

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

Primary black humour assigned restraint of the hot humours and nourishment of bones.

Argument: Melancholy here denotes fluid rather than simply sorrow.

Context: Historical bodily definition.

Source: original body

Source wording: Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sowre

Morbosos humores

Printed “Morbosos humores” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

Bodily fluids in a diseased condition, distinct from the useful primary fluids.

Argument: The adjective marks pathology, not the noun alone.

Context: Marginal phrase linked to Melanchthon’s naming.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: Morbosos humores.

Modern rendering: Diseased humours.

Alignment convention

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

Phlegme

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

Primary cold, moist bodily fluid assigned nourishment and moistening of moving parts.

Argument: Another primary humour.

Context: Historical definition, not a modern secretion-only category.

Source: original body

Source wording: Pituita, or Phlegme, is a cold and moist humor

roving humor

Printed “roving humor” (English). Attestation: phrase.

A disposition to range among subjects and authors without sustained method.

Argument: Behavioural sense distinct from an anatomical fluid.

Context: Burton’s self-description.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: This roving humor

Modern rendering: this wandering inclination

Alignment convention

Qualification: Exact modern lower-case phrase occurs within its opening sentence.

simple

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

Unmixed humour, excluded by the reported account of melancholy and intellect.

Argument: Simple describes mixture, not intellectual capacity.

Context: Position discussed through Pratensis, Melanchthon and Ficino; the larger question is contested.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: not of the simple

Modern rendering: not the unmixed humour

Alignment convention

Qualification: The source omits the noun humour; modern supplies it from the antecedent.

succus

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

Life-sustaining bodily juices; the four humours in Crato’s reported account.

Argument: Preserves the disagreement over humours and waste.

Context: Latin margin supporting the claim that all four are useful juices rather than excrements.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: succos, sine quibus animal sustentari non potest

Modern rendering: Juices without which a living creature cannot be sustained

Alignment convention

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