The Four Humors, Explained

The humoral theory was the main theory of health and disease for nearly 2,000 years. The idea that blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile could influence your health and personality were the foundation for treatments like bloodletting and leeches, but also the first inklings of psychiatry. In this video, Patrick Kelly will explain the theory of the four humors in depth, and how it was replaced by cell theory in the 1800s.
☠️NONE OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS VIDEO SHOULD BE USED AS MEDICAL ADVICE OR OPINION. IT IS FOR GENERAL EDUCATION AND ENTERTAINMENT☠️
🔗 L I N K S 🔗
📱Instagram: / patkellyteaches
🐦Twitter: / patkellyteaches
💰Patreon: / corporis
🔬Main channel: / corporis
📚My favorite books docs.google.com/document/d/1w...
🔑 P A T R O N S 🔑
Michelle H
Rourou Y
Joanne K
Luna
Joe B
Kristoffer R
Brandon K
Brendan P
Karly N
Ron Blumenfeld
Jojo F
Dane M
📜 S O U R C E S 📜
Passions and Tempers: a history of the humours (2007) by Noga Arikha
Discovery of the Cardiovascular System: from Galen to William Harvey (2011)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21781...
Galen and his patients (2011) www.thelancet.com/journals/la...
Legacy of Humoral Medicine by Faith Lagay, PhD (2002) journalofethics.ama-assn.org/...
32 - The Humors, Bedside Rounds by Adam Rodman, MD podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Ayurvedic Medicine, explained www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Morgagni’s legacy onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/p...
Baillie’s Morbid Anatomy royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
Morbid Anatomy (1793) wellcomecollection.org/works/...
Virchow’s Cellular Pathology (1858) www.google.com/books/edition/...
💻 C O N T A C T 💻
If you’d like to sponsor a video or have other business inquiries:
patkellyteaches [at] gmail.com
#historyofmedicine #medicalhistory

[@PatKellyTeaches]

A special thank you to my Patrons for making this video possible. I love getting to do these longer videos, but they take a lot of time to produce. Support on Patreon.com/corporis lets me take the time to go in depth on topics and not worry about cranking out content for the algorithm. If you're interested in supporting me, check out the link. Either way, have a lovely day!

[@phinhnanthasone1231]

"Cry of the suffering organs" - I totally can relate to this, with my body had cried several times already

[@PatKellyTeaches]

It's such a good line, right?!

[@phinhnanthasone1231]

@@PatKellyTeaches Indeed!

[@Agameda1]

I first heard of the 4 humours aged 16 through Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, last century now 😊

[@KevinButler55]

What a humorous video!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

buh-dum-chh!

[@kennie1814]

I would like to personally thank you for making me chuckle, it made my day just a bit better :)

[@lorenstiteler305]

Absolutely love your content! Just a couple corrections on the Chinese medicine side: 氣-qì does not refer to an "energy". The term literally translates to "air" or "vapor" and pertains to a classical Chinese worldview in which all things are composed of a single, fundamental substance which they regarded as a vapor. "five elements" is a mistranslation of the term 五行 wǔ xíng-five phases and pertains to a theory describing how vapor moves particularly as it relates to geographical influences. The theory goes that because everything is essentially composed of the same material, distinctions are not based on material composition but rather its behavior. In which case, The five phases is a model describing how this material moves. This makes it quite different from an elemental theory which proposes that all things are composites of a set of fundamentals. However, due to superficial similarities, the two models are easily conflated.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you so much for your generous explanations, and kind delivery of feedback. I really appreciate it.

[@SimmyKenz]

“Medicine daddy, sorry, father of medicine” got a real laugh from me. I feel humourily balanced

[@lostindustries4961]

FINALLY! Someone who lists their sources! It's hard to list a youtube video as a source for A collage paper, but with this I can actually give credit to people! Thank you for informative video essay and integrity of source listing.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I take sources and citations seriously, so thank you for noticing. And make sure to check out some of the books listed in the description -- Passions and Tempers was a great source for this video

[@CamelDance]

Thank you Theodor Schwann, your cells caused me a real headache, but your research played a pivotal role in having modern neurosurgeons be able to remove that headache!

[@vHindenburg]

Lol, came from my home town. He has a big bronce statue in front of the historical post office

[@TheEsotericaChannel]

I think another important cause for the demise of the humoral theory was the Paracelsian rejection of the theory in favor of early Iatrochemistry, especially that which thrived in French Paracelsian schools in the 17th century: Pierre-Jean Fabre, Nicasius le Febure, Bernard Gilles Penot, etc. These developments would be critical for the rise of modern pharmacology as well.

[@layanhammoudee3712]

I'm a pharmacy student and I wanted to understand the humor theory better so I clicked on your video and it's amazing!! Very well done on every aspect can't wait to binge watch all your videos ❤

[@robmorgan1214]

Sarcasm, slapstick, yomamma jokes, stand-up. I think that's about it.

[@TheEsotericaChannel]

From one educational content creator to another, let me thank you for your amazing work. This is just lovely and I'm so very thankful that you are producing this conten!

[@nickhoward7419]

It's funny seeing my favorite religious/esoteric channel comment on my favorite medical history channel, especially after you just started covering Paracelsus!

[@mightyena7092]

I thoroughly enjoy your videos each time they get released, I hope you know your content is top quality, keep up the great work!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate the kind words. I’m focusing on this channel much more this year

[@courage936]

the way you correctly pronounced ibin sina was refreshing ❤️

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you! I mess up pronunciations constantly, so I make it a point to look for pronunciations of non-English names

[@grandmauppercutter]

I hope the algorithm promotes you more I found this channel yesterday and it’s amazing!!

[@Ali_Ali5436]

I follow you from Syria Thank you very much for this wonderful content You are a great man❤️

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I love hearing where people are from! Thank you for the nice words

[@playmaka2007]

How do you only have 77,000 subscribers, your videos are perfection.

[@shinigami8068]

Lovely video as usual Patrick.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Many thanks! More to come

[@tombouie]

Quite interesting; Of course you're absolutely right but placebo/nacebo is amazingly real. For example when I was sick with the flu, my mom putting her hand on my head to check if I was still sick was the bestest medicine I ever had. Now I have to ask many times to get my fancy-pant physician-assistant wife to do it well. Nopes, my wife doesn't quite replace my mom (go-figure ;).

[@gokuxsephiroth4505]

Very nice. Very easy to understand. I'm just doing a little research on the humours for personal reasons, and this is one of the best videos I've found on it.

[@anastasiatoleen59]

You are amazing thank you so much ❤️ You didn't mention Al-Zahrawi(Abulcasis) or Ibn Al-Nafis, as these had great merit in medical sciences ،They created and composed many works

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you for the kind comment. I've heard of Ibn Al-Nafis before but not Al-Zahrawi. Can't wait to learn more about them

[@jovan2361]

Mr Patrick your videos are good and informative that i can't enough of them! I hope your channel keep growing bc you deserve it! Keep the good work!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you for the kind words! Many more coming this summer

[@jovan2361]

@@PatKellyTeaches excellent! I can't wait!😃

[@13donstalos]

I was always curious about this. Thanks for explaining things so clearly. I always learn a lot from your videos.

[@DanielinLaTuna]

Very cool video. One thing I would add - blood-letting actually works for some people with certain diseases. Folks with Viking heritage have a genetic mutation that causes too much iron (“heme”) to accumulate. Since iron is toxic, they need to bleed often. They were warriors, so problem solved. But, like in England, when the Norse invaders (the “French” Normans under William the Conqueror) settled and became a bit more peaceful, their offspring benefited from a medicine that, rightly or wrongly, “bled” sick people to “cure” them. Sometimes, these odd practices actually made scientific sense, in retrospect. 😊

[@jasonhall7491]

You deserve millions of subs. The quality is superb.

[@user-ns5tl5sz3n]

Lovely video as usual Patrick.. Great production value !.

[@nikevisor54]

Been waiting so long for this masterpiece to drop. Thanks for helping us pick the right leeches :)

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Man, I really appreciate the kind words, and more broadly, your long running support.

[@7DK7DK]

Great production value !

[@oamz]

Thank you for your efforts It’s a good brief overview of medical history

[@bubbletea1985]

I hope some day in the future, there will be a video talking about how far medicine has come since the early 21st Century.

[@everflores9484]

Commenting to help you with the algorithm, gonna watch later! I was wondering when you'd get out a new one a few days ago lol 😁

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate that. I had a rough autumn in my personal life, but now that I'm out the other side of it, I can put more energy into KZbin again. And this channel is getting my priority.

[@cyborgchimpy]

i'm not a med student or anything, but these videos are absolutely amazingly put together and very informative. really learned a lot here, thank you!

[@thamomentum]

Amazing. Thank you. Subscribed

[@MarleneEllis1]

Very helpful, thankyou.

[@robertschnobert9090]

I enjoyed learning about humors 🌈

[@Garblegox]

15:53 those silly little pointing hands made me laugh. All that effort when an arrow would have been fine. I love it.

[@Zeitgeist329]

Great video, great job.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you!

[@aztecchica]

4:26 Missed opportunity to use the "Numa Numa" song

[@PatKellyTeaches]

As a child of the 90s, I feel ashamed that I didn't

[@thecrazycapn]

Excellent video.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you very much!

[@cvleb777]

Subbed! Waiting on the Galen vid 😸

[@campionquinn1]

“Symptoms, then, are in reality nothing but a cry from suffering organs.” - Jean-Martin Charcot

[@jessiedevore3523]

Some I knew, some not. Love it 😀 😍

[@emmashafer4893]

Love your video! But wouldn’t Matthew Baillie’s last name be pronounced like Bailey, not like Bale? I also noticed that the video section about Matthew Baillie is called “Bale”, and I was wondering if there was any source that said his name should be pronounced like Bale and not Bailey

[@Therock151214]

Your Channel is so underated

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Ayyy thank you so much. More vids coming soon

[@katethielen3883]

Some say that bloodletting came from men seeing women get upset, have their periods, and then feel better, so they applied it to other things

[@dr.fabriciogerardoacevespl5390]

Only for colleagues: The organism (the soma) contains two polarities, not only corresponding from right to left, but also from bottom to top, which differ in proportions and in the specialization of its cellular components. If we analyze it, it is very obvious that the cephalic structures have a breech correspondence; Let me explain what I just said... the brain with its circonvolutions correspond to the intestines, just as the brain is divided into two hemispheres, the intestine also has two parts (Auerbach/Meissner plexus), the upper cingulate corresponds to the lower one, the shoulder blades are the iliacus, the clavicle with the public bones, which would not both be in the front if there had not been happened a caudal rotation in the embryonic period, the mouth correspond with the anus that has its “dentate line” the Müllerian ducts that later will be either fallopian tubes or deferens ducts, etc.; correspond to the visual pathway, the seminiferous glands are the mammary glands, which along with the omphalo replicate the trigone, the scrotum corresponds to the internal part of the vagina, they present the same pattern of fissures when they contract, the lungs with the kidneys, the heart with the Pecquet cistern, also the muscle groups and the vessels with their vascular terrain correspond, the liver with the pituitary gland (portal system). Perhaps the unconscious would be the autonomous system, and the conscious is the autonomous system of the unconscious. Now I am combining this knowledge with Hippocrates' theory of humors, and the occult anatomy.

[@empatheticrambo4890]

I'm disappointed, I was hoping to learn more about how to develop my comedic timing!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Lol, looks like you're off to great start already!

[@empatheticrambo4890]

@@PatKellyTeaches Seriously though, this was very interesting. These medical techniques seem so ridiculous now, but it's interesting to learn how cutting edge it was within the philosophies of the time, helpful or no

[@garrettbreinholt9748]

I love this channel, but man the KZbin algorithm loves it too. I was watching a Star Trek Lore video and videos from this channel were the first 4 videos suggested… I don’t see the connection 😂😂

[@IanZainea1990]

7:35 enlarged to show detail. Like the little insert box in the corner of the atlas that shows the city details

[@ME-yp7fn]

15:42 Four hundreds years before William Harvey, Ibn al-Nafis discovered the pulmonary circulation: "The work of Ibn al-Nafis regarding the right sided (pulmonary) circulation pre-dates the later work (1628) of William Harvey's De motu cordis. Both theories attempt to explain circulation"

[@NZKiwi87]

I’m less than a minute in and completely distracted by that logo on your shirt - is it a flying pig?! Anyway, had to ask 😂 off to watch the content!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Hahaha, awesome comment. It's Brooks Brothers' sheep logo. Thanks for watching!

[@markb1170]

Entertaining and informative at the same time! Also, as a German I'd say you pronounced Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann correctly. :)

[@PatKellyTeaches]

A rare pronunciation W for me!

[@itsjus_tay5913]

I just found your channel and I am a post-traditional student, so these are nice concise bites of information I can use to refresh and review.

[@codyfan1097]

Love the B.B. shirt!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you! I love a good collar roll

[@eedobee]

I’d love to know what, if any, current medical treatments you see are on their way out. Personally I think wound packaging, applying heat/ice to swelling, and default tooth removal will be antiquated before ling

[@GlowstoneWolf]

is there a reason why you think those specific ones will disappear? super curious!

[@richardautry9594]

Four or five thousand years ago, were either before, across, or after the flood in which case healthcare either exceeded ours or was in the stone ages. And a couple thousand, it was in the dark ages, or transitioning through the latter.

[@Ervin-fg6xw]

He is learning!

[@paulw858]

This is probably a really dumb question, but I've been recently studying the various aspects of our eyes, and there are two parts that have to do with "humour": aqueous humour and vitreous humour. Since those are still considered as humors, does that mean the stuff these old scientists considered humors are still humors? Like is blood still considered a humor? I'm insanely tired and probably not making sense. But I was just curious! I noticed that humor comes from a Greek word meaning juice or sap. And blood is sort of a juice, same with bile and phlegm... so maybe they are still considered humors, just not associated with these ideas of humorism?

[@ggEmolicious]

I hear 'Materia Medica' and I can't help but instinctively think, "Actually, it's called Restore Materia..." because of Final Fantasy 7. >_

[@hand.2]

very interesting to me how the balancing of humours resembles homeostasis

[@rogergriffin9893]

Natural herbal cures and a complete understanding of anatomy, plus basic cleanliness would have gone a long way to keeping at least some of them alive. Yeah, dissection and the invention of the microscope probably went a long way to getting things on track.

[@XOPOIIIO]

Why acetaminophen is around for so long if it's already debunked?

[@mothiiee]

Tbh i think the funniest thing is telling ppl we still do a lot of humoral remedies, just for very different reasons than we used to. Especially medical leeches i love medical leeches

[@stevengill1736]

"medicine daddy", LOL I find this post to be very humorous......

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Glad you liked that one. Father of Medicine is too bland

[@serenegenerally]

Well, now I’m gonna call Hippocrates Medicine daddy now

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I don't make the rules 😎

[@chandlerzhu9735]

18:42 why do all the letter 's' look like 'f' ?

[@PatKellyTeaches]

So, I'm not totally sure, but a quick Google search tells me that it was a way of denoting a long S sound. You'll see it a bunch when you read sources from the 16th and 17th century

[@boisterousbladder3652]

i have seen it in many old manuscripts and written works, maybe that has something to do with the pronunciations. i also saw the same in Robert Hooke's Micrographia.

[@LittleKitty22]

In the old script, the letter "s" was written in this way in the middle of a word - it's not a long "s" sound. At the end of a word it was generally written like a modern "s". This was only changed in the 20th century.

[@vHindenburg]

How about a video on what ancient medicine got right. I cannot get over it how ridolous humour theory is and how close it got to the truth, or at least it sounds like hormones.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I'm working on a video for August about ancient antimicrobials, and how some of them are pretty close to modern antibiotics.

[@joydeepsardar5858]

I saw this video, while my mbbs 😂

[@gurjotsingh8934]

We alternative (dissident) medical history!

[@dimasakbar7668]

I would answer: Slapsticks; Bait and switch; Pun; Parody.

[@SandyRiverBlue]

Talk about irony, Empedicles the Impediment.

[@austinmartin1993]

Wow! I hope I live to see the day that academia begins to regard virology as it now does humoral science. Thanks a lot for such an insightful retrospective! Fantastic quality of research on your part!

[@6eyed474]

It's been a documented phenomena that Koreans buy significantly more spicy foods during times of economic recession, so they weren't completely wrong that spicy foods could change a melancholic constitution

[@kevindoran9389]

I'd imagine black bile was just bloody vomit.

[@killshock360]

It's kinda funny to think that they aren't as far off as we think

[@Space-wh4vs]

🙏🙏🙏

[@Joy-TheLazyCatLady]

I am naming one of my next two cats Sixtus. I went to school with a dude named Galen so I am not naming a cat Galen. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Maybe I will name a cat Humorous. Maybe Humorous the Sixtus. Humoral? We'll see. 😂

[@PatKellyTeaches]

"Hello, these are my cats: black bile and yellow bile"

[@Joy-TheLazyCatLady]

@@PatKellyTeaches 😂🤣😂

[@April-yq5oz]

Medicine daddy 😂

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Glad you appreciate that one

[@codekillerz5392]

+April This is kinda weird. Are you April from bioZone?

[@linkin543210]

You know, I'm a bit of humorist myself ..

[@Rene-uz3eb]

So on the one hand the humors model was a black box model that you basically analyze with input output or treatment vs outcome. The drive later was to understand the body better, but I would argue it gave us hundreds of years of misguided medicine because doctors would always assume they understand the machine when in fact they only grasped the most basic mechanics like the heart pumps blood which then to this day gives rise to stupid mechanical fixes, when the body is this evolutionary hypercomplex cellular machine. Germ theory was a big advance, but then again, the biggest advance was supporting the body itself with more complete nutrition, ie the analysis of the input to the body (vitamins etc), back to the black box model. Ie all the better health happening around the time of antibiotics was people got sick less because they ate healthier (fridge). I'm not even sure that sanitation (going back to germ theory) was such a big deal, because all this was discovered when people were still in a state of malnourishment, basically medicine as an alternative to food/immune system, which has misguided health care ever since.

[@michaelkitchen4174]

either and gas were thought of as two separate gases air being life giving bloodletting was used not that much or sparingly.this is sensationalizing it.either and fire representing mental problems or symptoms.

[@breakfastsushienjoyer]

Lmao the 4 humors is crazy

[@skybluskyblueify]

I know this is about medicine and science but you may want to warn that there is discussion of dog vivisection [other animals too?]. I had to take a break after that. BTW I had fun reading the book: Things Come to Life: Spontaneous Generation Revisited, by Henry Harris on all of the classic experiments used to help get rid of the ideas surrounding spontaneous generation. A few of them went into the theories of disease and germ theory. The fights between famous supposed experts and the people that designed the experiments was wild.

[@rogergriffin9893]

😅

[@thezipcreator]

23:09 mac user detected

[@PatKellyTeaches]

guilty :P

[@JoJoJet100]

MEDICINE DADDY

[@theguywhosnothere]

The four humours, dad, dark, edgy and cringey

[@Heyu7her3]

😅 You forgot "dry"

[@sillysad3198]

how is it different from the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorder?

[@jantuck6358]

They applied it to everything without proper insight or a way to get proper insight.

[@sillysad3198]

@@jantuck6358 good one! i'll save it for children's birthday.

[@MichaelGrylsk-sd5ow]

to much emphasis on the islomo age what is that Greek it's Greek to me.

[@tauseefriazhakeem]

Unfortunately you didn't give single logical reason to reject humoural theory. How Rudolf virchow pathology debunked humoral theory?

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Hmmm let’s see if I can do better here. Humoral theory said disease was caused by humors, while cell theory and the pathologists said localized pieces of anatomy caused disease. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

[@tauseefriazhakeem]

I am physician treating people in Pakistan by herbal medicines. The system is called Unani (Greek) medical system. In this system we still use the ideology of galon and avenncina. Most of my patients are those who are incurable in allopathic system. In our system humoral imbalance is not the only cause of the disease. What are the reasons of local anatomical imbalances? Not germs only. We say most the times that humors are the cause of the local anatomy disorders but not always. Our system is close terrain theory.

[@grovermartin6874]

The physician in Pakistan who is using the folk medicine to try to help those who are not helped by current allopathic medicine brings up an insight. Isn't it curious how many well developed long-enduring health systems there are that prove helpful to their users? I am thinking not just of dietary, manipulative, exercise, meditative, or breathing systems, but also the more fully inclusive systems like Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese medicine, among others, that include herbs, massage, acupuncture, movement like qi gong, and far more than I know about. I don't know much about Ayurveda, but I have been astounded for years by Traditional Chinese medicine. What an amazing study of bodies/minds/spirits! It puts all our familiar "Western" medicine to shame. Of course, it's been around for thousands of years, as we know from Ötzi, the old man in the ice.

[@Artyomi]

So… you’re not gonna tell me how these are funny? I thought this was gonna be a video about comedy writing or something idk whats so humorous about “black bile”… wait nevermind, thats pretty humorous

[@AshesAshes44]

Lack of a *proper index?!?!* How dare you!! 🧤🧤🧤 Choose your second-- we shall meet at dawn, you blaggard! Oh heck, there's a reason I don't write historical novels. I don't think any of that was accurate at all

[@bth120]

I hope your videos gain in popularity.

[@theprofpenguin]

I had a term paper focused around medicinal history during medieval Europe and man-I wish I had your video available then cause teaching myself the four humors for some reason did not land with me then, so I focused more on the advances in medicine and how religion and social aspects of society affected treatment 😭😭 The other student that had medical history during the era as their topic focused on the humors and honestly I was taken aback they found so much info surrounding it 🧍

[@johnrine9671]

The 4 humors: Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp 🤣😂