Abstract

Hippocrates, the first physician, posited four body fluids (“humors”) that when imbalanced produced various physical maladies. Hippocrates's theory, however, was more than just one that linked body fluids to diseases; it also included a role for emotion. The humoral imbalances thought to cause illness also, in his view, created characteristic and chronic emotional states—black bile led to sorrow, phlegm to sleepiness, blood to sanguine feelings, and yellow bile to anger—and thus Hippocrates linked affect and disease by virtue of their common antecedents. Hippocrates no doubt had the particulars wrong. Yet if we ignore the devil in the details and, instead, focus on the big picture, Hippocrates provides prescient guidance: He motivates us to look for connections between emotion and health.