Fun with the Four Humors

which one are you?

I was never much of a STEM student, but in college, I learned about Hippocrates’ theory of the four bodily humors in a medieval literature class and it was like a light came on. It was such a simple and elegant way to understand the world. Never mind that the world did not actually function in the way Hippocrates described—this was the kind of science I could get behind. The symmetry was poetic and stunning. The human body, according to Hippocrates, is made up of four humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm), and each of those humors corresponds to the four basic elements (fire, earth, air, and water), and each personality is shaped by a preponderance of one of the elements. Sanguine people, with their excess of blood, are cheerful and optimistic; people full of black bile are melancholy; people with too much phlegm are unemotional and deliberate; and people with too much yellow bile are assholes.

Just kidding. People with too much yellow bile are splenetic, because yellow …