[ SCIENCE ] Humourism Debunked.

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In classical antiquity right up to modern times, it was believed that the body contained four "humours": blood ("Sanguine"), yellow bile ("Choleric"), black bile ("Melancholic"), and phlegm ("Phlegmatic").  It was wrongly believed that the proper balance of these four humours made a person healthy but an excess or decrease in any one of these would cause illness.  Because of this misplaced belief, treatments of sickness would include bloodletting (i.e., razors, leeches, et cetera), purges (laxatives), and emetics (vomitives).  Occasionally a mixture of poisonous herbs would be used in a vain attempt to "restore the balance".  The humors were also applied to foods -- for example, wine was "choleric" (yellow bile).  This classification still exists today to some extent, as we refer to some foods as "hot" and others as "dry".  The concept of humors was not replaced until 1858 when Rudolf Virchow published his thesis on cellular pathology.

While humourism may be interesting to some, it survives only as "conjectural" in the untestable and fringe regions of pop psychology.  But humourism is not just a way to categorize temperaments; it ascribes magical causes to those personalities, and mystically identifies personality with celestial bodies and seasonal changes -- specifically, astrology.  It wholly misinterprets bodily organs and fluids and it just can't stand up to the rigor and testing of modern science.  It's important to remember that humourism predates the real sciences of chemistry, forensics, virology, genetics, modern anatomy and physiology, modern medicine, psychology and psychiatry, and modern science entire.  When humourism was gaining ground in the time of Hippocrates (4th-5th century BCE), autopsies were not allowed, they would cremate bodies without examination.  Humourism is an ancient effort to make sense of the world and, perhaps in its time, it was the best that real science could offer.  But it has long since been discredited as a serious medical theory (i.e., black bile does not exist).  Humourism has been laughed out of modern academia.

Just as astrology and divination. Still, observations of movements of celestial bodies made by ancient astrologists make sense today.

Humorism proposes some classification of human temperaments - apart from the causes it proposes, the classification itself is just an observation - more or less equivalent to subspace Extroversion-Neuroticism of currently standard Big Five:

High Extroversion, high Neuroticism: Choleric
Low Extroversion, high Neuroticism: Melancholic
High Extroversion, low Neuroticism: Sanguinic
Low Extroversion, low neuroticism: Phlegmatic

The connection to bodily fluids is outdated by centuries, the observation itself is just... observation.

I was hoping this was about humor with a British spelling.

That is correct, only as far as you stated.  While the motions of some celestial objects were well-defined, their alleged influences on human behavior and destiny were not.  Astrological signs and bodily humours are nothing more than labels, and ones that can easily be redefined as the observer sees fit.  To say that someone has an "Aries" personality or a "Sanguine" disposition merely indicates one's subjective impression of that other person, and does not delineate their destiny or even define them as a person.I wish I knew some British jokes; unfortunately, most of them seem to get appointed or elected to public office.

This is exactly what I meant.
  I wouldn't compare "Aries personality" to "Sanguine disposition".
"Aries" is well-defined by date of birth, astrology claims some connection to destiny or personality.
"Sanguine", at least today, has some meaning as a personality trait, the connection to imbalance of bodily fluids is the obsolete part.

"Aries" and "Sanguine" were used only as examples, not for comparison.
"Aries" is in dispute, since about half of the people who were born between March 21 and April 19 are actually born when the Sun is still in Pisces.
"Sanguine" as a label for a personality trait has been supplanted by the MBTI method, which itself is in dispute.

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

The relation between constellations and Zodiac is yet another topic

I thought this was going to be humor as in a sense of humor. Like studying on what gives someone a sense of humor and how and why people laugh at things.

I read somewhere that they did a study where it appears that women who laughed at something funny were pleasantly surprised because they thought they weren't going to, while men who didn't laugh were disappointed because they were sure they were going to.

So I guess women think the world is a dark, unfunny place until they discover that it sometimes isn't. Big surprise. I can say that because I'm a women, right?

Dammit Fnord, stop ruining my luxury-brand leech farm business!

I'm sure that the lifestyles of the rich and famous won't be adversely affected.

Sorry 'bout that.I read somewhere that if a man can make a woman laugh, then she "already has one foot in bed".  I dunno ... it never worked that way for me.Yes ... let's make this thread all about what it means to be a woman ...

No, let's not ... and we'll just say we did.

Yeah, if the leeches don’t work out you can always sell them tapeworm eggs as dietary aids.

No, no, no, it would be improper, that would actually work!

Ah, of course, how silly of me

I dread to imagine what a high-yield tapeworm farm would look like...

I thought the idea up as a joke in an “unemployed persons mandatory work-related activity” session eight years ago... then did some googling to find there was some guy in Russia doing it for real
Lots of big jars full of low concentrate diarrhoea is what it looks like.