Theory of humors

An historical aside may clarify the issues. In the medical tradition that went from the ancients (Hippocrates and Galen) through the Middle Ages until the Enlightenment, physicians basically thought about disease in terms of mechanism. The conventional theory of humors was a crude attempt to describe illness in terms of imbalances in body composition, before the invention of modern chemistry and biochemistry. 

The major authority for medicine in the Middle Ages was Galen of Pergamon, who worked in Rome in the second century AD. Galen adopted the humoral theory of Hippocrates, including the classification of mental illnesses, and his therapeutic recommendations were also based on the tradition of the Hippocratic school diet, vomiting, blood-letting and the administration of soporifics. 

Reviews of the theory of capillarity and its application to solid-state processes have been written by Herring [1], Mullins [2], and Blakely [3]. Adam wrote a classic text on fluid surfaces [4], For modern mathematical treatments of capillarity, consult Finn s book [5]. For a mathematical treatment of curvature and anisotropic interfaces written for materials scientists, see Taylor s review article [6].1 There are useful analogies between interfaces and phase diagrams which are particularly instructive for materials scientists [7]. Anybody with a milligram of curiosity and a sense of humor must read C.V. Boys s book on soap bubbles although written for children, the book is full of useful insights about the nature of interfaces [8]. 

Although humoral medicine had many followers, a notable exception was Celsus (25 BCE-50 CE), a Roman encyclopedist. Celsus wrote De Medicina, which advocates a reasoned theory of medicine based on experimentation as opposed to speculation. 5 While the ideas of Celsus are more consistent with modern medical practice, they failed to displace the mystical appeal of humoral medicine.1... 

Not content with inventing the practice and theory of liquid—liquid partition chromatography, Martin (in collaboration with A.T. James) went on to invent gas-liquid chromatography (James 1952), now referred to as simply gas ehromatography. These remarkable accomplishments of Martin s appear to have been achieved with the aid of a dry sense of humor, as related later (James 1979) ... 

Karush, F., and H. N. Eisen A theory of delayed hypersensitivity. The man features of this phenomenon are explicable in terms of high-affinity humoral antibody. Science 136, 1032—1039 (1962). 

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