It is fortunate that the older currents of thought, medical and otherwise, were summarized at the very period at which they were destined to retirement by Harvey’s fundamental discovery. Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” is a collection of all the mystic, fantastic, engaging and (to our minds) incredible procedures of an ambitious science, suggestive of the waste-products of the mind. Burton anatomizes the humors, recognizing the four primary juices
without which no living creature can be sustained; which four, though they be comprehended in the mass of the blood, yet have their several affections. . . . Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humour, prepared in the meseraic veins, and made of the most temperate, parts of the chylus in the liver whose office is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and colour, being dispersed by the veins through every part of it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards by the arteries are communicated to the other parts
and so on, with a like conjectural anatomy and acrobatic physiology for the other humors. Burton’s appetite for the occult inevitably made him a believer in astrology. It is a fact that his horoscope is pictured on his tombstone, but it is presumably but a rumor that he assisted the fulfillment of the prediction of the time of his death by hanging himself. Burton’s work is suggestive in view of the career of the doctrines which superceded the “temperaments” as practical exponents of character. It indicates the ready temptation for views of this nature to degenerate into vain pseudo-science, and under a common enthusiasm and prepossession to bring together in mutual tolerance diverse
that he is "full colerick of compleccioun" and should beware of the "sonne in his ascensioun." Among the artists, Albrecht Dürer reflected the current belief that temperament was responsible for the differences of men. He urged that artists should present the features and proportions suitable to the characters of their subjects. One of his ripest productions, commonly known as "The Four Apostles," also bore the title of "The Four Temperaments,"—St. John representing the melancholic, St. Peter the phlegmatic, St. Paul the choleric, and St. Mark the sanguine.
The affiliation of "humors" and temperaments appears in the transferred use of the former term. The dramatic material of the age of Elizabeth, with its free emphasis of personality, was typically staged in Ben Johnson’s (1574-1637) "Every Man in His Humour" and "Every Man Out of His Humour." The following is from the induction to the latter.
To give these ignorant well-spoken days some taste of their abuse of this word humour," the argument proceeds: "Why, humour as ’tis ens, we thus define it. To be a quality of air, or water, And in itself holds these two properties, Moisture, and fluxure: as, for demonstration, Pour water on this floor, ’twill wet and run: Likewise the air, forced through a horn, or trumpet, Flows instantly away, and leaves behind A kind of dew; and hence, we do conclude, That whatsoe’er hath fluxure, and humidity, As wanting power to contain itself, Is humour. So in every human body, the choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receive the name of Humours. Now thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition: As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour."
