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Marcus Aurelius illness

sabato, 17 maggio 2008 ; 11:18

At the height of the Roman empire Galen (On Humours)  wrote that the basic element of every living creature was the humour. The four humours - yellow bile, blood, phlegm and black bile - were each charged with either active or passive qualities. They were related to the four elements of earth, air, fire and water; and to the four qualities of hot, cold, wet and dry. Humours were thought to be formed of elements with a combination of an active faculty (cold and hot) and a passive faculty (dry and wet). Thus earth, for example, since it had a dry and cold faculty, was potentially actively cooling and passively drying. What happened when a person fell ill was that an imbalance of the humours had occurred. The following case history is illustrative of the theories concerning the humours and the qualities.

The emperor Marcus Aurelius once fell ill. He believed that his stomach had been overloaded during a particularly extravagant feast and had thereby produced too much phlegm, the result of which was a fever because of the cold and moist nature of the phlegm. Phlegm arose from sleep, water, viscous dishes and sea food. If Marcus Aurelius had eaten viscous food, the subsequent delay in digestion would have caused indiges- tion and a green bile that would appear in the faeces. Galen's recommended remedies for the emperor's condition concur with the theory of the qualities: pepper was obviously heating, whilst Sabine wine, which was thin and dry, was especially good for stom- ach disorders, the thinness causing no obstructions and the dryness counteracting a moist stomach. (Mark Grant)

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