The Four Humours

  • 16 Replies
  • 25338 Views
?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
The Four Humours
« on: August 26, 2010, 03:57:09 AM »
The four humours of Hippocratic medicine like the four elements enunciated by Empedocles and Thales constitute genuine scientific tradition which pseudo-science eschews.  LaMarck and Darwin were agents of disinformation whose designated purpose was to confuse the study of biology.  A servant of the same masters, Rudolf Virchow's purpose was to conceal true knowledge of medicine from future generations by giving such knowledge a false stigma.

The 4 humors of the human body.  How is that an amazing truth of ancient and medieval world views with occultism and atheism has sought to destroy?  Last time I checked, medical science has cured far more than "the science of the 4 humors" ever did.

Under the cover of capitalist backed modern medicine, occultism and atheism have caused the widespread proliferation of terminal diseases and degenerative illnesses like cancer which were unknown whenever and wherever the four humors philosophy prevailed.  Artificial food including chemical agriculture which includes mostly poisons is also part of the science of death which has replaced Hippocratic medicine and natural food.  
Modern diagnosis such as cellular diagnosis of disease such as used in a pap smear is inferior to virtually any branch of tradtional four humors medicine.  Modern medicine is simply garbage, and thus it goes under cover of mysterious and knowledgeable sounding names such as cytopathology (cellular diagnosis) which most people have to look up in order to know what it means, but complicated words, big buildings, and money do not heal people.  
Correct diagnosis and good treatment of a medical condition are what heals people.

Anti-cancer chemical (chemo) therapy consists of inserting poisons into a patient's body in order that the cancer be killed before the body.  The principle is the same as chemical agriculture which uses deadly poisons to fight bugs - a modern practice which previous generations found unnecessary.  Antibiotics are also poison.

Murder by Injection:  The Medical Conspiracy
By Eustace Mullins
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/murderinjection.pdf

This book is a critical history of the American Medical Association from the 1850's to the present and includes chapters on poisonous detriments to health since that time which the AMA has officially introduced to the public with false propaganda that such novelties as mass vaccinations or the insertion of rat poison into tooth paste and water supplies are allegedly healthy.

Louis Pasteur's germ theory is an example of modern medicine's misunderstanding of the body.  Pasteur's rival Antoine Beauchamp was more honest than Pasteur, and he used a traditional method of pathology (diagnosis).  Beauchamp was infinitely Pasteur's superior, but Pasteur made friends with money and his fame spread in concert with the deterioration of medicine.

Pasteur's False Germ Theory
http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/terrain/lost_history_of_medicine.htm

-------------------------------------------------------------------

THE FOUR ELEMENTS
http://www.greekmedicine.net/b_p/Four_elements.html

THE FOUR HUMOURS

The four humors are a method of pathology (diagnosis) which along with the Hippocratic oath are the central aspect of the greek medicine of Hippocrates.  Hippocratic medicine is the basis of Greek, Roman, Arab and Islamic, and renaissance era medicine.  It was used in western medicine until the nineteenth century.

http://www.greekmedicine.net/b_p/Four_Humors.html

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF GREEK MEDICINE
http://www.greekmedicine.net/b_p/basic_principles_of_greek_medicine.html

DIOSCORIDES

Dioscorides was the physician of the Roman Emperor Nero.  He lived one century before Galen.  He also accepted humoural medicine, but his great contribution to medicine was his definitive and comprehensive herbal - the Materia Medica which was the standard guide to herbs in east and west for over fifteen hundred years.  Dioscorides is the father of herbology.

GALEN

Six centuries after Hippocrates, the pagan doctor Galen also accepted the four humours.  The consensus of practitioners of traditional medicine is that Galen preserved the knowledge and practice of Hippocratic medicine.  Some students of medicine even contend that whereas Hippocrates provided the basis of true medicine, Galen constituted its pinnacle.    

THE LEGACY OF MODERN WESTERN MEDICINE

After the franks usurped the papacy in A.D. 999, western europe became much more thoroughly separated from the tradition, knowledge and light of Eastern Christian Rome than it had been before.  Ignorance multiplied, and the spiritual and scientific traditions of the west were changed into a hideous civilization.   Thus, humoural medicine was viciously attacked during the early renaissance and late medieval west which resulted in horrors like the Black Death which annihilated over half the population of western europe.  

TOXIC METALS USED AS MEDICINE

Occultists of sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain also began to add poisons and metals such as mercury and arsenic to the dispensary of traditional herbal medicine.  Poisonous metals were used until World War II.  The introduction of poisonous metals during the British renaissance constituted the origin of the replacement of natural medicine by artificial chemical medicines which are conventional to the modern western medical establishment.  This toxic process is also described in detail by Will Allen in 'The War on Bugs.'

'The War on Bugs'
By Will Allen
http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/waronbugs

Thus over time, non-therapeutic and unnecessary elements were gradually added to Hippocratic medicine.  These corrupt practices such as bleeding or ingestion mercury were eventually used as part of a pretext for the rejection of the Hippocratic system itself which occurred during the nineteenth century.  The truth is that these non-therapeutic practices are essentially akin to modern western medicine as proven by medical history and experience.

The official British and american medical establishments were very corrupt and deadly in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.  Hippocratic greek medicine including humorism was officially eliminated as a practice of diagnosis by the British during the nineteenth century when Rudolf Virchow reasoned that diagnosis of individual cells was superior to the philosophy of the four humors and the medical establishment decided to follow him, but they wrongly assumed that the acquisition of quantitative knowledge disproves the humoural philosophy.  If humoural medical philosophy is correct, then its principles would consistently apply to new medical discoveries.  Less than half a century later, Victor Rocine methodically applied the mass of new discoveries to humoral analysis and proved that Virchow's assumption was baseless.  The western medical establishment's rejection of humoural medicine was unscientific, and it was based upon Rudolf Virchow's baseless presumption probably due to a bias against humoural medicine merely because of its antiquity.  

NICHOLAS CULPEPER

The very famous herbalist Nicholas Culpeper is the best known doctor of Elizabethan England.  He was persecuted as a leftist democrat like the Levelers, and he used Hippocratic medicine and four humors pathology.  Nicholas Culpeper is a landmark of the persistence of ancient Greek medicine in England before such medicine was forced underground during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Culpeper was already ridiculed by the medical establishment in the early seventeenth century.  Culpeper's Complete Herbal is probably the most famous herbal in the world.

The Complete Herbal
By Nicholas Culpeper
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/66/113/frameset.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Culpeper

HUMOURAL MEDICINE AND THE MULTIPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES

"The classification of people into inherent constitutional types became of much greater importance than previously in the 19th. century and reached its height of sophistication towards the beginning of the 20th. century. These developments were primarily driven by the decline in the medical practice of the humoral model, and by scientific discovery of the macro- and micro-nutrient chemicals, which appeared to expand knowledge beyond the simple system of the temperaments, although this information did fit in remarkably well with the metabolic model represented by the functions of the humors.  One of the major researchers in this area was Victor Rocine (1859 - 1943) who by 1908 had developed and implemented a inclusive genotype system of classification which contained twenty distinct inherent constitutional types that correlated perfectly with the classifications of the classical temperaments of Graeco-Arabic Medicine."

http://www.traditionalmedicine.net.au/chapter2.htm

AYURVEDIC AND TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE

Neither Ayurvedic medicine nor Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have a theory of four humours, but they have good aspects such as the use of herbs.  In my opinion, both of these systems do include occult and religious aspects combined with the treatment, especially in Ayurvedic medicine.  Traditional Chinese medicine contains less of this except for its focus on "chi" (energy) which, in my opinion, could involve some characteristics inherited from Buddhism involving demons.  Any possible negative effects of these two systems is negligible compared to the horrors of modern western medicine.  Although neither Ayurveda, TCM, nor modern western medicine adhere to the philosophy of the four humours, both Ayurveda and TCM practicioners have been far less hostile to it than modern western medicine.

UNANI MEDICINE

Hippocratic medicine was preserved most intact by Arab and Islamic medicine.  The Greek medicine of Hippocrates constitutes the original basis of Islamic medicine.  Hippocratic medicine survives most strongly in the branch of islamic medicine from India known as Unani medicine.  Unani is the arabic word for Ionia or Greece.  (The Turks, for example, say "Unanistan" when referring to Greece.)  Therefore, the Unani islamic medicine which survives intact in India is the Greek medicine of Hippocrates.  British colonialism tried to annihilate the practice of Unani medicine during the nineteenth century and replace it with its own lethal western medicine, but the colonialists failed to conquer it, and Unani medicine has experienced a gradual resurgence since the fall of the British empire.

'Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600-1900'
By Seema Alevi
http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Healing-Indo-Muslim-Tradition-1600-1900/dp/0230554385/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282816585&sr=1-2

MODERN MEDICAL BOOKS WHICH UTILIZE DIAGNOSIS BY THE FOUR HUMOURS:

The Traditional Healer:  A Comprehensive Guide to the Principles and Practice of Unani Herbal Medicine
By Hakim Chishti
http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Healer-Comprehensive-Principles-Practice/dp/0892812257/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282817881&sr=1-2

The Traditonal Healer's Handbook
By Hakim Chishti
http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Healers-Handbook-Medicine-Avicenna/dp/0892814381/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282816574&sr=1-1

SOME WEBSITES OF GREEK MEDICINE WHICH UTILIZE THE FOUR HUMOURS:

http://www.greekmedicine.net/
http://www.unani.com/
http://www.traditionalmedicine.net.au/
http://www.unanidoctors.com/
« Last Edit: September 05, 2010, 01:24:31 AM by 17 November »

?

clovis2

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 42
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2010, 07:51:08 PM »
A very in depth and intelligent study of a vital topic.

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #2 on: September 01, 2010, 10:11:56 PM »
TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE

Traditional Chinese Medicine was also very persecuted by British colonialism and suffered a decline during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The rise of communism and repulsion of colonialism under Mao Tse Tung represented the end of opium addiction and the return of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China.  Maoist China revived TCM and retained the best aspects of western medicine which resulted in health statistics in China turning dramatically for the better overnight, and these have remained good ever since.  Two books in particular have been central to Traditioanl Chinese Medicine in modern China:

1) 'Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion'
By Cheng Xinnong is the the preeminent classic of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the twentieth century.  An english translation has been published and kept in print by Foreign Languages Press in Beijing ever since 1949:
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Acupuncture-Moxibustion-Cheng-Xinnong/dp/7119017586

2) The Barefoot Doctor's Manual was the standard medical book in Maoist China.  Very unfortunately, the great social medical system - of which this book was a part - was partially done away by the capitalist policies of Deng Xiaoping.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_doctor
http://www.amazon.com/Barefoot-Doctors-Manual-Translation-Paramedical/dp/089471810X

The decline of the common man after Mao's death in 1976 and due to China's adoption of capitalism during the Deng Xiaopeng / Ronald Reagan years and ever since is chronicled in:

Red Cat, White Cat:  China and the Contradictions of Market Socialism
By Robert Weil
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Cat-White-Contradictions-Socialism/dp/0853459681/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283406104&sr=1-2
« Last Edit: September 01, 2010, 11:12:49 PM by 17 November »

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #3 on: September 01, 2010, 10:24:24 PM »
A very in depth and intelligent study of a vital topic.
Appreciate your interest in this topic of which I am most certainly your inferior in knowledge.  I am simply interested in the truth which has led me to Unani medicine.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that, of course, some Eastern Orthodox Christian monasteries have preserved traditional greek Hippocratic medicine as well.  I possess a couple of books (in greek) of traditional medicine which were published by monasteries in Cyprus.

THE TRADITIONAL HEALER
BY HAKIM CHISHTI

I just received my copy of Hakim Chishti's 'Traditional Healer' which is very satisfactory in that it goes beyond a natural medicine book that merely outlines herbal remedies as opposed to western medicine.  The book is a self contained guide to medical diagnosis.  Other books such as the well known 'Prescription For Nutritional Healing' by Phyllis Balch are excellent, but 'The Traditional Healer' by Hakim Chishti takes the place of the chief medical book in a medical library.   

The Traditional Healer:  A Comprehensive Guide to the Principles and Practice of Unani Herbal Medicine
By Hakim Chishti
http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Healer-Comprehensive-Principles-Practice/dp/0892812257/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282817881&sr=1-2

'Prescription For Nutrional Healing'
By Phyllis Balch
http://books.google.com/books?id=2s_q2y_J3rwC&dq=prescription+for+nutritional+healing&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=sil_TJigMcP2nAevjYCwAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

----------------------------------------------------------

Below is an excerpt from the introduction to Hakim Chishti's 'Traditional Healer':

'Many people may be unaware that herbal medicine served as the primary mode of medical practice in the United States until almost 1935.  A review of the then-current physician?s drug handbooks shows that physicians routinely used ginger, garlic, valerian, lobelia, and hundreds of other herbs as the primary therapeutic agents.  Of course, this practice did change as chemical medicine burst on the scene with penicillin.  Yet, prior to 1935 - for perhaps two thousand years prior to that date - ALL physicians accepted and adhered to the humoral basis of both human and herbal constitution.'

  'The theory of humors - semivaporous substances that maintain the proper temperament of the organs - are the heart of the medicine of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, of Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, and of virtually all other traditional systems.  Yet this tremendous consensus among prominent medical authorities for two millennia is ignored.  Instead, yielding to the underpinnings of orthodox medicine, even most herbalists today are interested in determining what the "active principles" of drugs are, which is to say, what herb will work as an anti-bacterial instead of penicillin.'

  'Ever since 1976, when the World Health Organization formally adopted its policy of promoting traditional remedies, Unani medicine has enjoyed a worldwide upsurge of interest. ...'

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2010, 12:50:40 PM »
HUMOURAL DIAGNOSIS VERSUS ALLOPATHIC CHEMICALS

On page 29 of the 'Traditional Healer' by Hakim Chishti, we read:

"The invention of the microscope has taken us away from the source and origin of the problems associated with disease.  For example, most physicians would attribute an infection to one or more bacteria and will produce actual living specimens of those bacteria which they say caused such and such an infection.  From the Unani Tibb point of view, the deviation from the normal state of the humour provided a suitable environment for the bacteria to grow to larger than normal populations.  While admitting the existence of the bacteria, the Tibb scientist must look deeper to the cause of the imbalance in the humour and its characteristic temperaments.  Thus, the mode of current medical practice that "attacks" the red- and white-cell-forming organs does not take into account the fact that blood itself is living and not simply a conglomerate of chemical components."

"Thus in Tibb, the dictum "Health is a harmony of the humours" is the only valid point of view if one desires to cure the cause of the disease.  Chemical destruction of the abnormal growth of microscopic life may result in a temporary decline or total eradication of the population of microorganisms, but if the imbalance of the humour is not corrected, the disease will recur or arise in another place in the body.  More important, the dramatic effects of the chemical drugs themselves on the humours result in new imbalances, as evidenced by the many so-called side-effects of drugs..."

http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Comprehensive-Principles-Practice-Medicine/dp/B000M51WZ0/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283542505&sr=1-3


THE ORIGINS OF DISEASE:  DYSTEMPERS
http://www.greekmedicine.net/pathology/Dystempers.html
http://www.greekmedicine.net/pathology/pathology.html

DIAGNOSIS OF DISEASE
http://www.greekmedicine.net/diagnosis/diagnosis.html
« Last Edit: September 05, 2010, 01:30:11 AM by 17 November »

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2010, 12:21:06 AM »
http://www.greekmedicine.net/

I only discovered this website by David Osborn less than six weeks ago, and I discovered Hakim Chishti and his books through Osborn's website.  

Although I was unfamiliar with greek medicine before six weeks ago, one reason that I have taken to it like a duck to water is that I have a long standing interest in traditional medicine.  I have previously looked into both Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine to some extent.  I was previously unaware of the Unani / Greek school of medicine among the muslims of the Middle East and India.  An initial investigation into Hippocratic Greek medicine clearly revealed that it lacks the mixing with religious beliefs which does occur perhaps a little bit with Traditional Chinese Medicine and especially with Ayurveda.  That was decisive.  Although I am not too knowledgeable of Ayurveda, I am aware that it does have concepts like the chakras which correspond to concepts in Hippocratic medicine.

*

bullhorn

  • Flat Earth Scientist
  • 629
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2010, 05:55:36 PM »
I myself am looking into this work as well.  Well put brother 17.

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2010, 12:05:03 PM »
Traditional Healers Handbook
By Hakim Chishti
http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Healers-Handbook-Medicine-Avicenna/dp/0892814381/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286219014&sr=1-1

While generally critical of western medicine, Chishti's book also states in one place that the field of emergency medicine is one of the most legitimate contributions of western medicine and lies in its domain of expertise.  As far as emergencies or accidents and a few things in which surgery is preferable (it usually isn't) are concerned, I concur with this.  However, as an everyday way to live one's life and a philosophy of health, nutrition and medicine are concerned, then modern western medicine is inferior.  I believe that many or perhaps even most in the west have realized this to some extent.

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the moon.  This is in fact a part of humoural medicine which takes into account all factors having to do with the seasons.  As important as that is, I think it is generally less important overall than nutrition.  The ancient greek physician Galen believed that every food had its own temperament:  hot or cold, wet or dry, or some combination of these.  Thus an elaborate system of classification of foods as well as herbs was developed.  Knowledge of this helps to maintain a balance of the humours and cure the cause of disease at least as muchas knowledgeof the seasons.  In fact, these things all work together comprehensively (i.e. holistically). Certain foods are preferential depending on the season, a person's age, a person's own temperament, and a few specific other factors.

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #8 on: October 16, 2010, 12:35:19 AM »
The metabolism of food has three aspects:  digestion, assimilation, and residue.

1)  DIGESTION - Food and drink enter through the mouth.  Digestion is fragmentation or breakdown of food as small as possible.  This is accomplished by heat, the vital power of the body.  The body cooks food beginning with mastication and saliva in the mouth and is continued in the stomach and the small intestine.  The number of different kinds of enzymes that accomplish this breakdown of food by heating is well beyond the knowledge of modern medicine which only has knowledge of a handful of them.  The body is much more complicated than the cosmos.

2)  ASSIMILATION - This digestive process leads to the liver.  The liver is a factory that sends these foods to become the different parts of the body.  The best parts become blood.  The four humours are manufactured in the liver.  As an essential organ, the liver equals the heart.  Without a liver, no one can survive even for a short time.

3) RESIDUE - The unuseable parts are dispensed to the large intestine. 

---------------------------------------------------

THE TEMPERAMENTS OF FOOD

The two most essential temperaments are heat and cold.  All foods, drinks, and herbs can be classified as either hot or cold. 

HOT FOODS SPEED OR INCREASE BODILY METABOLISM. 
COLD FOODS SLOW BODILY METABOLISM. 
 
Furthermore, each food can be classed according to one of four degrees of intensity of either hot or cold. A food or drink of the first degree temperament is one that is mild and is mostly reacted upon by the body instead of influencing the body.  Water is an example of a first degree cold drink.  Fourth degree foods, herbs, or drinks are the poisons.  Fourth degree hot foods speed up metabolism faster than the rates which can accomodate life.  Fourth degree cold foods slow or stop bodily metabolism to a rate too slow to sustain life.  In a proper diet, hot and cold foods balance each other.  This concept even applies to the fourth degrees as this is how one can logically discern an antidote to a poison.  Unfortunately, most nutrition systems are classified according to nutrients rather than the way the foods assist the body.  If we select foods according to their degree of heat or coldness (whether they speed or slow metabolism), then our diet can assist the metabolism of the body.  One should eat to live rather than live to eat. 


HEATING FOODS

Meat and Fish: lamb, liver, chicken, eggs, goat (male), fish (general).

Dairy Products: sheep's milk, cream cheese, cream, clarified butter (ghee).

Vegetables and Beans: beet, radish, onion, mustard greens, red lentils, white lentils, kidney beans, leek, eggplant, chick peas, red pepper, green pepper, carrot seed, squash.

Fruits: peach, plum, orange, lime, mulberries, red raisins, green raisins, olive, ripe grapes, pumpkin, all dried fruits.

Seeds and Nuts: sesame, almond, pistachio, apricot kernels, walnut, pine nuts.

Grains: thingrain rice, basmati rice.

Oils: sesame oil, corn oil, castor oil, mustard oil Be ~ gts black tea, coffee.

Herbs: cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, fenugreek, ginger, celery seed, anise seed, rue, saffron~ garam masala (blend), curry powder (blend).

Other: honey, rock candy, all sweet things, salt, all modern medicine.


COOLING FOODS

Meat: rabbit, goat (female), beef.

Dairy Products: cow's milk, mother's milk, goat's milk, butter, buttermilk, dried cheeses, margarine.

Vegetables and Beans: lettuce, celery, sprouts (general),  zucchini, spinach, cabbage, okra, cauliflower, broccoli, white potato, sweet potato, carrot, cucumber, soybeans, tomato, turnip, peas, beans (general).

Fruits: melons (general), pear, coconut, fig, banana, pomegranate.

Seeds and Nuts: none.

Grains: brown rice, thick grain rice.

Oils: sunflower oil, coconut oil.

Beverages: green teas.

Herbs: coriander (dry), dill, henna.

Other: refined sugar, vinegar, bitter things, sour things.


When food is not eaten according to this natural metabolic principle, the foods are not digested properly which leads to accumulation of superfluous substances which will eventually reach a limit called the healing crisis.  The healing crisis involves fever which is a heat that cooks down the excess matter in order to eliminate it from the body.  This is exclusively accomplished in five ways different ways which include mucus, vomiting, and diarrhea (which is a rapid evacuation from the body of toxic substances).  Unfortunately, western medicine attempts to control diarrhea, stop vomiting, and stem nausea with drugs.  Thus, western medicine attempts to hault the very processes the body uses to eliminate toxic substances and turns these substances and chemical drugs inward to the body creating unnecessary complications.

The basic diet of the majority of americans (milk, beef, potatoes, salads, white sugars, cheese, butter...) is virtually all cold foods.  Excess cold foods leads to imbalance of the phlegm humour which produces diseases common to americans such as arthritis, headaches, constipation.  When this trend reaches an advanced stage (an excess of the black bile humour) diseases such as cancer and emphysema develop.

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #9 on: October 24, 2010, 10:39:02 PM »
A very in depth and intelligent study of a vital topic.

Please don't credit me.  I only pass along what I find, and I have found that our own dear Church Fathers knew this medicine of which the key is balance.  Saint John Chrysostom says the following in the ninth paragraph of his ninth homily against statues to the people of Antioch:

"But the marvellous thing is not this only, that He hath made a great and admirable world; and that He hath compacted it in a way above the usual course of nature; but that He hath also constituted it out of opposite things; such as hot and cold, dry and moist, fire and water, earth and air, and that these contrary elements, of which this whole universe consists, though continually at strife one with another, are not consumed of one another. The fire hath not overrun and burnt up all things; the water hath not overflowed and drowned the whole earth. With respect to our bodies, however, these effects really take place; and upon the increase of the bile, fever is generated; and the whole animal frame sustains an injury; and when there is a superabundance of phlegm, many diseases are produced which destroy the animal."

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf109/Page_404.html

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf109.xix.xi.html

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #10 on: March 26, 2011, 08:15:10 PM »
Medicine and Colonialism
By Frantz Fanon

http://books.google.com/books?id=4EKH5xb_9noC&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=fanon+medicine+and+colonialism&source=bl&ots=cLFsAhMJVG&sig=DN63DcHezqq18Swr2p_73RmxwlQ&hl=en&ei=eqaOTejmKoS5tgfhxsnCDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=fanon%20medicine%20and%20colonialism&f=false

Scroll to page 121 (Chapter 4 of 'A Dying Colonialism').

--------------------------

The conflict between British colonial medicine and Hippocratic medicine is the subject of:

Islam and Healing:  Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition
By Seema Alavi

Indo-Muslim medicine?or the Unani tradition?developed in South Asia alongside Mughal political culture. While it healed the body, it also had a profound bearing on the social fabric of the region. Seema Alavi?s book shows the nature and extent of this Islamic healing tradition?s interaction with Indian society and politics from roughly 1600 to 1900.

Drawing on Persian texts for the pre-colonial phase, Alavi moves beyond the standard colonial archive to deploy unused Urdu texts, pamphlets, local newspapers, and private family records. Alavi shows precisely how, in the period of high colonialism, established practitioners kept their tradition alive. Their struggles to preserve and recast the Mughal legacy, control knowledge, and consolidate doctrinaire languages of power when confronting print culture and Western education are compellingly documented and analysed. In the present context, where West-dominant globalization demonizes both Islam and cultural alternatives, the implications of this book are profound.

SEEMA ALAVI is a professor of history at Jamia Milia Islamia. Her Cambridge PhD was revised and published as THE SEPOYS AND THE COMPANY many years back, and she has published several books and learned essays since then, as well as been a visiting fellow at Harvard.

http://permanent-black.blogspot.com/2007/11/islam-and-healing.html

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #11 on: November 09, 2011, 07:02:22 PM »
Though effective, inexpensive and easily available, the Unani system of medicine still continues to lurk on the fringes of alternative healing, perhaps due to its unfamiliarity or due to its Muslim associations.

http://www.lifepositive.com/body/traditional-therapies/unani.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna

?

Vongeo

  • Official Member
  • 6004
  • I don't get it either.
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2012, 02:20:43 PM »
I will be giving blood on the 22nd as to balance my humours.
Vongeo is a wanker, he wears a wanker hat; he always smells like urine and he thinks the Earth is flat.

No longer is this sentence is cut in half. Jekra!

*

Ichimaru Gin :]

  • Undefeated FEer
  • Planar Moderator
  • 8902
  • Semper vigilans
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #13 on: February 21, 2012, 04:54:35 PM »
Cancer's name originates from Hippocrates ( I believe ). He noted in persons with tumorous growths, angiogenesis created an observable physical amplification of visible 'legs' of blood vessels. So much in fact, that he believed them to resemble the legs of crabs. Hence he used the word cancer to describe the affliction suffered by such patients.
Prior humour studies did not have such a name for diseases and made no distinction between non-related growths and cancerous ones: both were traced to black bile, along with depression. I would love to ask old humour proponents if both distinct growths originated from black bile or if in fact, the two could be distinguished by invoking a differing fluid.

~Ichi
« Last Edit: February 21, 2012, 04:56:43 PM by Ichimaru Gin :] »
I saw a slight haze in the hotel bathroom this morning after I took a shower, have I discovered a new planet?

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #14 on: February 25, 2012, 05:34:08 PM »
Cancer's name originates from Hippocrates ( I believe ). He noted in persons with tumorous growths, angiogenesis created an observable physical amplification of visible 'legs' of blood vessels. So much in fact, that he believed them to resemble the legs of crabs. Hence he used the word cancer to describe the affliction suffered by such patients.
Prior humour studies did not have such a name for diseases and made no distinction between non-related growths and cancerous ones: both were traced to black bile, along with depression. I would love to ask old humour proponents if both distinct growths originated from black bile or if in fact, the two could be distinguished by invoking a differing fluid.

~Ichi
Fascinating information about the word cancer.

Any way, I am not even a novice as far as humoural diagnosis, but I will look into what you asked and get back to you on the specifics.  ( I have been more busy than you could imagine lately.) 

However, as I understand it, many or most proponents of this system have not considered the humours themselves to be actual liquids.  They are only semi-materialistic substances.  An imbalance of these humours is what causes conditions in which disease manifests.

*

Ichimaru Gin :]

  • Undefeated FEer
  • Planar Moderator
  • 8902
  • Semper vigilans
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2012, 05:38:00 PM »
Quite correct. I must apologize for the clumsy use of liquid  ;D
I saw a slight haze in the hotel bathroom this morning after I took a shower, have I discovered a new planet?

?

17 November

  • Flat Earth Believer
  • 1318
Re: The Four Humours
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2012, 06:01:15 PM »
I was recently reminded of the importance of Islamic science generally and especially Indian muslims in recent centuries in the preservation of ancient greek science.

I just bought a critical book about Adamantios Korais, the eighteenth century Voltairean greek intellectual who became the spiritual father of europeanized modern Greece.  The greek author of this book is the founder of the Center For Asia Minor Studies in Athens and an eloquent critic of the enlightenment's influence upon Greece.
http://www.amazon.com/Adamantios-Korais-European-Enlightenment-SVEC/dp/0729410021/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330220533&sr=1-1

I came across a very interesting passage describing how Korais chose to learn ancient Greek.  A greek in his time who wanted to learn Arabic would have to learn it through a Turkish teacher, and Korais hated Turks too much to be taught by one.  However, Kitromilides states that any serious student of ancient Greek must also learn Arabic in order to master it. 

That statement concurs with Turkish writer Halide Edib who declared in her 1930 book 'Turkey Faces West' (criticizing Mustafa Kemal's secularism) that the Ottoman Empire and the Arabs who preceeded it are the genuine Eastern Roman civilization.  The Arabs and Ottomans have preserved the Graeco-Roman sciences - not the europeans who actually abandoned them.