Talk:Humorism

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2021 and 25 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Fridaday, Toothpaiste. Peer reviewers: Victoriamartinez3456.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2021 and 18 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Trxydi. Peer reviewers: Dcoop7665.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:03, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Inconsistency
At the moment the article says that blood was considered to be produced in the liver and in the table it claims that blood was considered to be produced in the heart. It can't be both. To me that makes the content in the table questionable. ChristianKl (talk) 23:20, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Summary somewhat misleading
Reading this, the heading is not clear that this article is about an ancient and completely discredited scientific idea, akin to Ptolemaic cosmology. This makes it hard for a reader unfamiliar with the subject to understand that it is mostly of interest due to its historical importance, rather making it sound like it is a theory that is either still in use, only recently disproved, or mainly a current fringe theory (It very well might be as well, but it mainly is of historical interest. Same as ptolemaic cosmology should probably not focus on current believers in it.) 71.10.232.9 (talk) 03:58, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

WP:OVERLINK
Greetings! I did the following changes to the article:

Phlegm redirected to Phlegm#Phlegm and humourism

Black bile was redirecting to melancholia. However, melancholia has been described as a mere consequence of excess black bile; the link was not pertaining to "black pile" itself.

Yellow bile was redirecting to bile | The link didn't provide any additional information on "yellow bile" itself.

Blood did not define "Blood (humor)" at all.

Ancient Egypt changed into ancient Egyptian medicine, the link remaining the same.

Here's also a list overlinked words: black bile; yellow bile; phlegm; blood; Greeks; Romans; Muslim; Western European; four elements; season; Greek; juice; flavor; Mesopotamia; foods; life; geographic; occupations; diseases; temperament; health; sanguine; choleric; melancholic; phlegmatic; Unani; drama; cellural pathology Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 09:46, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh come on. Yellow bile is urine, and Black bile is feces. No need to make anything mystical about it.216.116.87.110 (talk) 16:54, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Modern Equivalents did not belong here
There have been repeated attempts to incorporate modern equivalents (first Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, then Keirsey Temperament Sorter). This is wrongheaded. It *is* significant to those modern personality characterisations that they have tried (or practitioners of them have tried) to link them with the utterly discredited theory of humourism. But it is not relevant to humourism, because these modern personality characterisations did not exist when it was a current theory. The equivalences are not helpful for a modern reader trying to get to grip with the humourist categorisations either, because they are not exact equivalents. Mostly, I think it is an attempt to give Myers-Briggs, Keirsey, and all an ancient pedigree that they simply do not have (and if they see themselves as valid theories should not want). For those reasons, I am removing the modern equivalents from the table and I would encourage other editors not to put them back. Furius (talk) 12:29, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Move request of Melancholia
A discussion is taking place on the title of this article at Talk:Melancholia. All input welcome. Thank you. walk victor falktalk 11:14, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy
Greetings! There was a source called '[Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy] recently added to the article. IMHO, we'd need something better than sources dealing with extraterrestrials. Moreover, if the source is to be taken as an "encyclopedia", then we should strongly favor reliable secondary sources instead of some tertiary sources, such as encyclopedias (WP:TERTIARY). Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

OK enough edit warring, and enough shifting grounds.
 * you reverted first with edit note, "We need something better than a source on extraterrestrials", which is a bullshit reason, then:
 * then again; with edit note: "Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate on any given occasion is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, and should be discussed on article talk pages"

Please provide a valid reason under policy or guideline for rejecting the use of the source and content:

Today, humourism is described as pseudoscience.

thanks Jytdog (talk) 21:04, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Please see the section Talk:Humorism above Please see my post above. Also, like explained in my previous Edit Summary: ""Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate on any given occasion is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, and should be discussed on article talk pages." (WP:TERTIARY)"
 * As it is said, it should be discussed on the article talk pages before adding sources like this. I hope this helps! Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 21:09, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * OI hate repeating myself. I will do it anyway. Please provide a valid reason under policy or guideline for rejecting the use of the source and content.  And more importantly, are you actually claiming that humorism is not pseudoscience today? Jytdog (talk) 21:13, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * "... enough edit warring ... a bullshit reason..." Please watch your mouth, Jytdog. Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 21:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am watching the page, you don't have to ping me. And you did edit war. (breaking 3RR is punishable, but reverting over a revert is already edit warring)  In any case,  you clearly don't have a valid reason.  Quoting RS is not "discussion" and tertiary sources are generally fine.  I will take this to RSN as you have nothing to actually say. Jytdog (talk) 21:23, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

see Reliable_sources/Noticeboard Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 4 March 2015 (UTC)


 * unless someone can provide a clear reason why this published book is not considered reliable I see no reason to delete the sentence. Kindzmarauli (talk) 22:04, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * please comment at RSN - no point having 2 discussions on the same matter. Jytdog (talk) 22:11, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Mistake in Humor-Organ Table
In the table under the "Four Humors" section, relating the humors to organs, black bile is listed as being associated with the gallbladder, when I think it should instead be the spleen. I think it is YELLOW bile that is associated with the gallbladder. The two seem to be switched.

The page for Spleen discusses its association with black bile (and melancholy).

This is not a reliable source, but here is a webpage on the humors that relates black bile with the spleen, and yellow bile with the gallbladder.

Could someone look into correcting this?

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.100.172.20 (talk) 17:00, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * that is what the ref says. if you have a different reliable source (as we define that) that says different, that would be interesting. in wikipedia the source you link to is not considered a reliable source. Jytdog (talk) 05:25, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Temperaments incorrectly associated?
The table showing the associations between the elements, their humours and their temperaments does not agree with the information provided on the Four Temperaments page which, for example, says that the Sanguine Temperament is associated with Air, not Water as described by the table on this page.

Acegiak (talk) 12:13, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * fixed. Jytdog (talk) 18:36, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

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Humorism or Humourism?
So, recently changed all instances of "Humor" to the British spelling "Humour," with the reasoning that Humo(u)rism was largely a European phenomenon (I could find historical American sources on Humo(u)rism but they cite European sources as their authority so, yeah).

reverted on the grounds that the article is still titled Humorism and should've been moved to Humorism. I think that the rename was Bringlish's tenth edit, so he wasn't autoconfirmed until just now and so I'm not sure he could have moved the article at the time.

I'm considering moving it myself but I had to ask "wait, what term was most commonly found in humo(u)rist literature?" Now, I've not done a proper Google n-graph or whatever, but here's what I found going through historical sources (not just modern translations of historical sources):
 * "Humour" (six authors, eight works): Giambattista della Porta's Natural Magick, William Salmon's Botanologia, the English Herbal (written in America!), Ebenezer Sibly's Key to Physic, Culpepper's English Physician, and New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Sciences; Daniel Defoe's Compleat System of Magick: Or, The History of the Black-Art, Sloane 3826's Book of the Angel Raziel, and the (very loose) English translation of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Declamatio de nobilitate & precellentia Fœminei sexus
 * "Humor" (nine-ish authors, thirteen-ish works): Chymica Vannus and Eugenius Philalethes's (a.k.a. Thomas Vaughan's, i.e. "Vannus") Magica Adama and edition of the Fama Fraternitatis; Basil Valentine's Last Will and Testament; Giovanni Bracesco's translation of Pseudo-Geber's Espoitione di Geber Philosopho and De Alchemia Dialogi (part 1 and part 2); Michael Maier's Arcana arcanissima, Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, Anton de Haen's De Magia Liber, Paschal Beverly Randolph's After Death, the Disembodiment of Man (though other works of his use "humor" in the modern sense), Giordano Bruno's De Vinculis in Genere and De Magia,
 * Both: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy

This was a surprise for me. "Humor," at least as far as alchemy is concerned, seems to be the more common historical spelling. Considering the Latin is hūmor, this does make sense, though. Sibly and Randolph demonstrate that the split happened somewhere during the 19th century and by that point they were undeniably WP:FRINGE works (granted, the works I cited weren't all exactly mainstream but at the time they weren't considered to be in Not even wrong territory). Another interesting trend is that all the sources that use "Humour" were either written or translated by Brits (even if Salmon was writing in and about America). The original version of Agrippa's Declamatio doesn't seem to use either "humor" nor "humour," and I'd be willing to bet that della Porta's and Agrippa's original Latin works strictly use "Humor." This appears to be an area where British English overcorrects and veers away from historical spelling. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:54, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

he probably referred to blood composites in patients with bleeding internal organs
When Hippocrates really observed "open bodies" he should have seen but one bile: green. So yellow bile and black bile are philosophical connotations. Some have coined these as universal but I think Hippocrates was more modest, and, was talking about "the Greeks" he had met.

Point???

145.129.136.48 (talk) 08:12, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

contiued use in Western medicine
"Although advances in cellular pathology and chemistry criticized humoralism by the seventeenth century" -- I am not aware that the science of cellular pathology was known in the 16th, 17th or 18th century. Plant cells were first reported in 1665, and red blood cells in the 1670s, but cells in animal tissue were first studied  in 1824 by Henri Dutrochet and credit for the first work in cell biology is usually ascribed to  Theodor Schwann   in 1839. Our article on Pathology correctly says that "Modern pathology began to develop as a distinct field of inquiry during the 19th Century". As for chemistry, biochemistry began in the period from Lavosier in 1777 to Justus von Liebig  in 1869.

The humoral theory was criticized on other ground by the 16th or 17 th century, but not because of cells. And I think even so it continued not "well into the 17th century" but "well into the 19th century"., but for exact referencesI need to do some checking.  DGG ( talk ) 18:37, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Ancient Criticism of Humorism?
Was the theory truly completely accepted in the Ancient Greece/Rome, there wasn’t any criticism of it? I know it was completely dominant in the European medicine at least until Renaissance, but there was truly no opposition what so ever? It would be nice to have some critical thinking examples on this theory.

Ceplm (talk) 07:33, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: History of Science to Newton
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