A Geek History of Time - Episode 248 - The Humors of the Ooze, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Four Humours Part I

Episode Date: January 27, 2024

Okay, so there's there there are two possibilities going on here. One, you're bringing up a term that I have never heard before. The other possibility is that this is a term I've heard before, but it involves a language that uses pronunciation that's different from Latinate. And so you have no idea how to say it properly. An intensely 80s post-apocalyptic schlock film. And schlong film. You know, it's been over 20 years, but spoilers.

Oh, okay. So the resident Catholic thinking about that, we're going for low earth orbit. There is no rational blame it on me after. And you know, I will they mean it is two o'clock in the fucking morning. I am. I don't think you can get very much more homosexual panic than that. No, which I don't know if that's better. I mean, you guys are Catholics, you tell me, I'm just kind of excited that like you and producer George will have something to talk about That basically just means that I can show up and get fed I'm not sure what to the real world.

My name is Ed Laylock, a world history and English teacher here in Northern California. And this week, my son actually joined us in our monthly Pathfinder game at the end of our last game session. Previously, he he's kind of jumped up and when my wife or I have a role to make, he'll he'll click to roll because we're using roll 20 on the computer. We're playing virtually now. And so he's been making roles for his mom or his role, roles for me. And after our last session, I was fiddling around with Hero Forge to work on my character's avatar for the game. And he saw me doing that and he was like, Daddy, Daddy, can I make a character? And for the campaign, I have not started running yet. I had actually already tried to make

self insert versions of our whole family. So there there was already a him I had made. And I showed that to him and he said, oh, well, but I want to I want to I want to do this guy. And in here, of course before she clicked on the lion folk species Figure and changed his his his avatar into a lion folk and he's like oh that's cool and then we added a little dragon hatchling coming out of its egg onto his base and he was all stoked and

hatchling coming out of its egg onto his base and he was all stoked. And so my wife, the genius that she is, said, you know, maybe you ought to check with our game master about whether there's a way that we can, you know, actually, you know, find a way to have a character there for him to play. And I talked with my GM about it and he was like, oh, yeah, no, I have the perfect idea. And he said, have you ever heard of the character Ryoga Hibiki? And I blinked and I said, Yes, I have. And he said, Well, whenever Robert gets tired or, you know, loses loses,

his attention span doesn't want to don't want to play anymore or, you know, has to go to bed because he's five. His character is cursed so that he turns into a potbellied pig, which is Riyoga Hibiki. That's his curse. He turns into a potbellied pig or a young martial artist. It was like that's brilliant. And the potbellied pig can be his mom's characters, you know, beloved pet she finds at some point and there we go. Well, so last night was our game night rolled around and he joined us and he when when combat finally rolled around,

it wound up being a very investigation role playing heavy session. When combat finally rolled around, it wound up being a very investigation role playing heavy session. When Combat finally rolled around, his turn came up. And no kidding. His very first role out the gate for an attack was a natural 20 that because this Pathfinder first edition, the critical was confirmed. And he wound up doing like 17 points worth of damage critical was confirmed. And he wound up doing like 17 points worth of damage to a ghoul that, you know, promptly died in traumatic fashion. And he got to tell all of us exactly how the ghoul, you know, clutched his chest and fell over. And he was stoked. He was so excited. So yeah, his his very I almost feel bad for him because on the one hand,

that's awesome. On the other hand, like it ain't all going to go that way. Mm hmm. We've made the remark within our game that really actually the biggest villain is the number randomizer on roll 20 because there are some nights that literally everybody in our group has a hard time rolling higher than 10 on anything on a D20. But yeah, so that was that was very cool. And he was very excited and very happy. He was also very disappointed when the fight ended and we called the session for the evening. He was even more disappointed when he then found out that no, no, OK, you've been up two hours past your bedtime.

It's it's now you get to go to bed now. So but yeah, so that's what I've had going on. How about you, dude? I'm stoked for you. I'm also selfishly stoked because this means that that on some Sundays, we could have a get together of Blalock harmony. And I could I could craft things and you could be your son's familiar. Nice. His sidekick. Nice.

He can have the day off. Yeah. Go to Target and not spend any leisure time of her own and just do things for the house because apparently that's how some people relax. And yeah, I mean, let's, yeah, off air, we're going to talk about this. Yeah, yeah. I'm Damien Harmony. I am a high school US history teacher up here in the Northern California area.

And I showed my kids because as of this recording, I I showed my kids because as of this recording Tis the season to be spooky But neither of my kids particularly appreciates that like they they my son is especially sensitive to suspense Okay, my daughter likes the idea, but like a lot like the moth to the flame like she likes it And then it freaks her the hell out. Like she never finished Jurassic Park. She stopped right as the velociraptors were cornering them in the lobby. I'm like, come on. We just watch one more minute where you see it resolved.

No. So. But she's drawn to it, too, which which makes me worry about her dating future. But, but that being said, we watched the Twilight Zone episode Terror at 20,000 feet. Oh, the original? The original Shatter. And yes. And then I right before we start start recording I showed them at least the first 20 minutes or so of the Twilight Zone movie yeah that had the vignette right and I know

John let's go yes and I noted the the narrator's voice for it I see you recognize that voice and you know like no I'm like but there was time now time enough at last. I'm like, oh my God, that's him because it's Burgess Meredith narrating Yeah, the the Rod Serling part. Mm-hmm. So so that was fun. That was that was a lot of fun And I will I now look forward to showing them the episode of third rock from the Sun where John Lithgow's character and Bill Shatner's character both are getting off the plane and they are shook. Just because... Yeah, yeah. I talk about moments of stunt writing in Network sitcom. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.

But anyway, so that's what we got going on. I've also showed them showing them the Batman movies. So We're halfway through the original Michael Keaton one. Okay. Hey, did you notice the vulture and they're like, yeah I'm like he never plays a character that doesn't fly So All right, cool. Yeah. Anyway, you got anything for us today. I Do not man. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, let me let me let me let me just try this Okay Out of all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which one would you identify with the most?

Identify with the most yes Not aspirational just just aspirational actual. That's that's hard. Um, like the first the first answer I have is Rafael, but OK, then that's that's the answer. OK, yeah, you got you got how much of that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's it's Raph. I think I spent an inordinate amount of my time just kind of being unreasonably pissed about shit for no good reason. And and yeah, which one do you wish you did not identify with the most? Raph. Okay, well, not the most, but like, which one do you wish you do?

Which one do you regret identifying any part of yourself with? Put it that way. And it still might be Raph. Yeah, I'd, I'd. My secondary answer to that one is. Uh, damn it. Hold on. Casey Jones, April. Leonardo. to that one is. Damn it. Hold on. Casey Jones, April, Leonardo, written stockwell Leonardo.

OK. Yeah. Go on. The the kind of had a hide bound stick in the mud kind of aspect of his of his character. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Which stage mutant ninja turtle do you wish you were the most like? Hmm

That's that's a hard one just because well, okay, I wish I was most like splinter, but that's not the question. You're a turtle. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Um, after my last answer, this is going to sound weird, but Leonardo because he's the he's he like like Michelangelo is the heart of the team. Mm hmm. But Leonardo is the team's moral compass. Yeah, he's he's he's the noble one. And so, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle do you appreciate the least? appreciate the least.

I know like people have their loyalties here, and I know that I'm going to make some people like are going to be some people that are shocked when I say this. I don't tell them. OK, Donatello, just just because. Yeah, OK, he just he just doesn't there's there's no part of this character that I connect with. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So there was an article written four or five years ago of how to get someone to fall in love with you. And there was a series of like 21 30 questions or something that you ask

the other person and they were designed to get them to open up in a specifically intimate way and essentially to open themselves up to the possibility of intimacy with you okay not the not necessarily this will get you laid not even necessarily this will manipulate it you into somebody, but how to get a person to be most on board with the idea that let's see if this works. Okay, all right. On that questionnaire, none of these questions work. And I think honestly, these four questions would have been better than most of the ones on that questionnaire. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, having said that, my partner and I actually did read those questions early on in our relationship. We are madly in love. OK. I think we're headed that way anyway. It is. Yeah. But, you know, it was a fun lark. OK. So so to answer the questions for myself, I most identify with Rafael. OK. I really wish with Raphael. Okay.

I really wish I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, actually, no, I identify most with Donatello. Okay. I wish I didn't identify with Raph. Okay. I wish I was most like Leonardo.

Okay. And I appreciate Michelangelo the least Okay, which is interesting Yeah, because how different we end up being but yeah, inspirationally we're both paladins at heart But tonight's episode I already had it planned out So listeners are like wow, he's really riffing. No, I know, not for this. Tonight's episode is all about how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are drawing on far more than archetypical foundations than most would expect and how that has influenced how we applied for jobs in the 1990s and the 2000s. Okay, I'm intrigued.

Okay, I'm intrigued. A second title would be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the four humors expressed through the New York immigrant experience. Okay, yeah, I'm equally intrigued. Right. So, in light of the fact that we're going to be talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it's clear that we need to start with Alchemyon of Croton. Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, like you do. I mean, it's obvious. He lived in the fifth century BCE and what

we'd now recognize as the bottom of the footpad of the boot of Italy. Okay. And although at the time they called it Magna Graica.. It was an Achaian colony, which was founded by Myskelus. And, you know, I'm going to Romanize these names, so probably Mycelis. The son of Alimon, who'd come from one of the original 12 cities of Achaia. I'm sorry, Achaia. That's the diphthongs, fuck me up. Hercules came to him in a dream and said to go forth and make a cool new colony for folks to live in. I think that's a direct quote. And to seek out, quote, stone filled waters of Isar and to make a new place. The

laws at the time forbade such things because that's what a healthy society does Um, and he was then put on trial and magically Hercules changed all the white pebbles to black or whichever Or it was to vote him as innocent in the trial Okay, he sailed away and found a burial mound of the guy Croton Whom Hercules had met like 40 years or so earlier. Croton was really cool with Hercules in a way that many people weren't and he'd promised that there would be someone equally cool as him who would come and settle that area later and build a proper city. Mycelis was

that guy and incidentally the guy who helped him found Croton was a guy named Archeus from Corinth. He left after it was done and he founded Syracuse or Syracusa. Okay. Okay. So it's 710 BCE and we're founding Croton. Got it. Okay. It's cool. Within 200 years it has about 80,000 people in it. Oh well. All right. It totally makes sense. It sits on or near the Isaro's River. We would call it a sorrow on and on the coast. It's an easy mid spot for merchants and travelers

who are looking to get their goods up in the boot or to stop down before getting over to Sicily. OK. all right. Sorry, my screen just went black. There we go. The people were known for being hella strong there and living simply, producing many Olympians, including the most famous Milo of Croton.

OK, the guy with the calf that turns into a cow, right? Yeah, right. He walks around the track. Okay. Now, because of where it was, there's lots of physicians famously coming from there. And lots of people who were famous for being smart began setting up schools there. You may have heard of a guy named Pythagoras. Okay.

In about 530 BCE, he set up a school there. That's about 19 years before Rome becomes a republic, by the way. It's about 50 years before the Battle of Thermopylae. It's about 99 years before the start of the Peloponnesian War. Just so that we have some context. Got it. Got it. Now, we'll get to the turtles soon.

Now, one of the most famous students to come. No, we won't. By soon, I mean within three episodes. Okay. All right. All right. Yes. If we adjust the scales.

Okay. But no, one of the most famous students to come out of the Pythagorean school was Alk Alk, Alk Myon. Got these Greek names. They are a bitch. Are they really are? Yeah, if you don't, if you don't speak Hellenic Greek, like, yeah, it's just.

It sucks. Yeah. Latin, you could see why the Romans were like, no, we're just. We're just going to. Yeah, Jupiter, Jupiter. We just don't. Jupiter. Jupiter. Jupiter. Jupiter. Yeah. Not all of theos pater.

No. I am Jupiter. I'm completely forgetting his name, but the the classics professor on tick tock long long long long blonde hair guy. Yeah, Maxwell. Yeah, Maxwell. I kept wanting to say McClellan, but he's the theology guy. Correct.

Professor Maxwell actually had a bit responding to, and I'm totally forgetting her name. But anyway, responding to somebody saying, look, even classic scholars don't agree on the only pronunciation of many of these names. Demeter or Demeter, I've heard both of them used in an academic context in the same conversation. Like nobody does now. It's like getting angry that Andrew Jackson writes a word three different spellings in the same letter.

It's like, that's what he does. That's just it's just it's a thing. Yeah. So Alchemyon. Now, Alchemyon was a medical theorist more than he was an actual physician. So already back then, you have guys who are like, oh, I don't actually touch the bodies. I just it's just, you know, I just opine. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Theory guys. Yeah. Now, he studied diseases in a very systematic manner, though,

relying on evidence and experimentation to make his conclusions. He was a fan of anatomical dissection. And he actually gets credit for being the first European physician to discover the Eustachian tubes in the years. Oh, all right. That's pretty cool. Very forward thinking guy compared to what other people developed based on his theories. And for all these, for all these praises, Alchemyon's theories led to some really awful and stupid shit for the next 2000 years that sounded really good despite being total and complete horseshit.

Well, yeah. Yeah. A little bit of knowledge is a very dangerous thing. Yes, especially if it's spoken by someone who has the confidence of someone who is used to being known as being smart. Yeah. Because now all their energy is going to that. Yeah. So he theorized that one of the reasons for us getting sick internally was because internally we were naturally inclined toward a state of equilibrium within our bodies Balance between what he called the four humors Yeah, these humors all oppose each other and that tension that force if you will is what homeostasis really is Thus if we are sick, it's because we have too much of one and not enough of the others.

OK, yeah. The reason this theory resonates with us is because he blended the practical with the intuitive in a way that a man being told how smart he is is prone to doing without any real reflection or testing these ideas over time. The practical concerns one must consider in humorism when trying to figure out why someone is sick are the environmental factors, the air you're breathing, the amount of movement and sunshine you're getting, the nutritional factors, which on its surface makes a lot of sense. You know, there's a lot of modern medicine and even psychiatry that bear a lot of that stuff out. Like, are you getting enough exercise?

Are you getting enough sunlight? Are you getting fresh air? Are you eating right? Like, you know, there there are whole internet memes about, OK, look, I ate the green. I ate the green stuff. I spent time under the bright, glowy thing in the sky. I moved my limbs around now. Make the goddamn happy hormone.

Like, you know, right? Yeah. So those those are factors. moved my limbs around now make the goddamn happy hormone. Right. You know. Right. Yeah. So those are factors. Yes, they are. Comma, but. Yes. So, you know, you then start to realize like if you really start to interrogate these things

like these concepts and yes, sunlight is good, vitamin D comes from the sun and all that. And yeah, moving around absolutely makes feel better. And you can absolutely influence like the outside margins of things. But honestly, you should probably also look into germ theory. And these guys didn't. And as a result, they go way the fuck off the rails. They're literally more than a thousand years removed from German theory. Like, yes, the idea of German theory is so many universes separated from these guys.

Indeed. And yet at the same time, they're the reasons we have the name for it. Like, it's one of those like, how did you hit the ball so hard? And you were three feet from me and go so far foul. Well, like, like, like, wow, you knocked it clean out of the park on the wrong side of the foul line. Right. Or like, oh, my God, you knocked the shit out of that thing. Like it is missing its skin.

Like you hit it so hard, you split its skin. Yeah. And is. Directly behind you. Like you hit it so hard, you split its skin. Yeah. And it is directly behind you. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you you knocked a whole clean through the chain link over over home plate. Right. When you're playing school, like just you killed the announcer. All right. I mean, you hit it really hard. Just not. You went the wrong way. Yeah. So interestingly, there's some strong debate as to whether or not those

two terms first came up in Elk Myon's discussion of human health and influence discussions of government or in the discussion of other philosophers when it came to the types of government and their necessary components, which then influenced his idea on human health. So chicken egg, we don't know. If it's the former, then it's entirely possible that Montesquieu's balance of powers meme that informed our founding fathers is a codification of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles long before they were brought into being. Now Alcmaion had more than just the four that we've come to know. He included elements like we've known them through literature, all sorts of stuff, and

eventually his theories get pared down to what we've come to know as the canon, as credited to Hippocrates. Yes. Now, Hippocrates said that they were essential bodily fluids. And a fun fact, the term that Alcmion was using was the ancient Greek word. And it's funny, as soon as I started typing it in Greek, no pronunciation problems. So okay. So the Greek word Kaimos, which is Greek for sap, juice or flavor. Now, this is not to be confused with Ikor, which is specifically the watery part of the juice or the watery part of the pus or blood or way. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Hippocrates took the rod and ran with it.

The four humors were blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. In short, Hippocrates and later Galen said that an extreme imbalance of these four specific fluids in the body would lead to illness, whereas a minor imbalance could cause behavioral issues. Okay. So if you're just a little out of whack, you need a savers. If you're really out of whack, you have measles. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. A research coordinator with a PhD in philosophy at New York College named Konstantinos Kala, Kala, I didn't write it in Greek. Um, he wrote an article in 2015 called the Hippocratic view on humors and the human temperament. And in it, he attributed this quote to Hippocrates. So much more the expert than I. Okay, quote, the human body contains blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These are the things that make up its constitution and cause its pains and health. Health is primarily that state in which these constituent substances are in the correct proportion to each other, both in strength and quantity and are well mixed. Pain occurs when

one of those substances presents either a deficiency or an excess, or is separated in the body and not mixed with the others. The body depends heavily on the four humors because their balanced combination helps to keep people in good health. Having the right amount of humor is essential for health. The pathophysiology of disease is consequently brought on by humor excesses and or deficiencies. That's been attributed to Hippocrates by this expert. Okay. Obviously, this has easy analogues to the idea of the four elements earth, air, water and fire. And those linkages were made often differently from each other through the next 2,000 years. Yeah. So shortest possible. You could get sick because your your humors are out of out of whack with each other.

They need not only the right amounts in your body, but balanced against each other. Yes. If they are not mixing with each other and balanced in the right way, that's when you get sick. Okay. All right. Now the thing that Galen brings to the discussion was that foods would encourage different humors. For instance, if you eat warm foods, you'll get more yellow bile. Cold foods will give you more phlegm.

And later others respond to these and similar claims and either deepening them or amending them. And as the Hippocratic influence spread partly due to Galen, partly due to others of that school of thought, so too did the foci of the Humors. Some thought that one's environment was especially pertinent, cities that were exposed to hot winds would lead to more gut trouble because that would cause the phlegm to develop in excess and run down the body from the head. Cold wind cities had higher incidence of lung based issues, more eye issues, more nose bleeds, more acute headaches, more diseases, more bowel hardening diseases. And of course, some of these physicians also added to this that if

you live in a Western city, you were just overall weaker and unhealthy and prone to all the things, which they're Greek. So they're Bayer bias would be anti-Oxident. Okay, fair. So if you could home in on the actual cause of an internal disease, find out which humors were out of balance and why, you could counter prescribe and get the person back to what the Hippocratic physicians began calling Eucrasia, the mildness of the air rather than dyscrasia, the bad temperament of the air. And vice versa, by the way, if your humors were out of whack, you could expect specific illnesses as well.

So if your nutrition and your environment and your lifestyle were good and you still got sick, then your humors were imbalanced and we have ways to fix that too. So if your yellow bile was too much, warm diseases, if your phlegm was too much cold diseases, diseases, right? Galen specifically identified four temperaments in which one of the qualities, warm, cold, moist or dry, were dominant. And for more in which a combination of two, warm and moist, warm and dry, cold and dry, cold and moist, dominated. As such, you get the following, sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic.

That becomes the mean going forward to describe these combinations. The easiest way to do it is to just give you a list. So sanguine, and I'm doing it in chronological order in the course of a year. If you are sanguine, that is is also the air that is also the spring Okay, it is a simple and naive soul It's housed in the liver. It's warm and it's moist If you are choleric you are fire you are summer you are a sharp and intelligent soul You are the gallbladder. It is and dry. If you are melancholic, you are the earth

that is autumnal. That's autumn, a preserving and consistent soul. It's obviously the spleen. And it's cold and dry. Obviously. Yeah. And of course, flagmatic would then be water. It would be winter, a soul with no influence one way or the other, and more of a reactive person, I suppose, and the lungs and the brain, and it would be cold and moist. Okay. So that's the essential, like, boil down to it. This leads, this is this, and this is this and this is this you know, okay? Yeah, we used to use a certain model that a certain turf

Gave us about boarding schools, but I just said not But yes now these then get ported over to personality and psychologically Our psychology as well because despite the thorough inaccuracy of any of this toward actual medicine, it was very holistic and very convincing. Yeah. In the same way that, like, oh, that's such a Gemini kind of thing to do is, you know, it's the same kind of mindset as astrology. It's like, oh, yeah, that's a very general set of characteristics.

I can totally apply this to, like, oh, yeah, that's a very general set of characteristics. I can totally apply this to like everybody I know. Yeah. Yeah. And then that only happens, you know, when I'm talking to a Scorpio and retrograde or whatever. Funny. Yeah. So Galen himself used these terms to identify bodily dispositions which determined what diseases you were prone to getting, as well as behavioral and emotional inclinations and their connections back to those diseases. Now, I don't know about you, but this does sound kind of like, you know, well, people with certain body or blood types get such and such.

Yeah. And is there data to support that? Yeah, there actually are data to support like certain blood types. Blood types. Yeah. And is there data to support that? Yeah, there actually are data to support like certain blood types. Blood types. Yeah. Do have better resistances to certain things. And what have you? Because there's actual chemistry involved in blood types. Well, there's you can actually point to, no, no, these are observable, like, physiochemical characteristics that affect the way your body deals with diseases. As opposed to this, which is like, well, these are observable, like, physiochemical characteristics that affect the way your body deals with diseases as opposed to this, which is like, well, you know, this feels like, right.

Oh, you are melancholic, sir. So you're, yeah, be positive. Yeah. So, so someone who was like, Maddox, for instance, would be reserved, right? Yeah. And as such, they were more of a winter and thus got more congestion diseases. A person who was melancholic would be more prone to being depressed and get cancer more often, which I know that is such a cancer thing to say. That is that is so totally, oh my God. Yeah. But yeah, just could you imagine like, oh oh the reason you have cancer is cuz you're melancholic Oh fuck that's of no help what's that that doesn't mean no good because I have cancer and that makes me more melancholic

Motherfucker, I like that doesn't mean no good because I have cancer. Yeah I'm about to get very caloric with you. Yeah, well, and speaking right now, one could be seen as short tempered and ambitious and hot tempered even. Therefore, their diseases tend to be more prone to diarrhea, vomiting and gallbladder issues, which make me so mad. I'm a shit myself. I'm a shit myself.

You know, having having been that bad. Let that red rage flow. Oh my god. Yeah. I'm just so mad I can puke. I could just. Oh wow, he's a fountain going both ways. He must be really pissed off.

Yeah. That's the only thing he's not doing. Right. He's not pissing. That's everything else. Waterworks. Yeah. That's the only thing he's not doing. Right. Right. He's not pissing. That's everything else. Waterworks. Yeah. But no, he's cry puking and shitting his pants all at once. He's that angry. I would be very angry if that was my night. I really would. That would be so mad. That pointed to be a chicken in the egg. Like wouldn't he piss off because of that or did this start happening and be a chicken in the egg. Like, would it pissed off? And it's happened because of that?

Or did this start happening? And now you're like rage crying. And let's be real, like my anger would be such a secondary emotion. I would be so scared. I was vomiting. I was so frightened by this. One of my children threw up just recently

and they were like, hell of fine about it afterward. I'm like, I can't show you how terrified I am right now. I just have to clean this up. You go back away. But you just like calmly lived out my worst fear, like or one of my worst fears. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. I am scared to death of throwing up. Like I have I ate bad salami on a hike once.

to death of throwing up. Like I have, I ate bad salami on a hike once. And that night, all I had to do was, was make an offering to the porcelain god, make an oral benediction. Yeah. And I refused because I was, I get so scared. So I laid on the tile floor with my back bare so that the pain of the cold hitting my kidney area and my QLs would distract me from the nausea I was feeling until my body was like, fine, we're shitting it out. Four hours later, I went through four hours where like two minutes of just chunder would have been fine. No, no, you wouldn't go in the other way.

I don't care if you have to take a U-turn. I don't care. I don't care if you get stuck in a roundabout. Ooh, big Ben Parliament. No. You were going the other way. Wow. And so having my child just live it out and like seriously, I was like, you know, part of me is like you couldn't have gotten to the bathroom, but the other part of me is like, how are you so chill about this? like Wow, how are you not paralyzed with terror? Yes, how are you screaming in fear right now? Like wow the only things that frighten me more are snails and slugs And I know how much those things scare you. So that's that's the holy cow. Yeah So anyway, if someone was sanguine, they would be jovial and social and very active. Yeah, and naturally they'd have bleeding diseases Like oh you look so happy I am. Oh, you're bleeding I am I am

Also, they'd be ruddy-complexed Typically, yeah, you're bleeding. I am. I am. Also, they'd be ruddy, complexed. Typically. Yeah. You know, Florida, Florida faced kind of kind of right. So yeah, sanguine, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the way to help. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. I having, having, you know, being being somewhat familiar with with these archetypes, you know, as as, you know, the medical explanations fall on. I never understood why the cheerful disposition was associated with blood. Oh, that's easy. And the rage filled disposition was associated with with black bile, right? Caller. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Caller. Like so. So I just it never made sense to me. Like one would think bloody minded being

such a convenient phrase reminded being such a convenient phrase that the association would be, well, you have an excess of the red stuff in your body and that's why you're pissed off all the time. But yeah. No, it's just my side about the whole thing. If you are cheerful, you are blushing. If you are cheerful, there's color in your lips. Oh, OK. The blood has rushed to your face. OK. But when you turn purple with fury, that's not the same thing.

No. OK. No, that's that's a a rising up of the spleen fluids. Wait, did I know I mixed it up? Yeah, I did. No, that's rising up with the gallbladder fluids. Yeah, because caloric is gallbladder. And that's yellow bile. Oh, okay. It's yellow bile. Black bile is the splinter. Yeah, okay.

Huh. And yellow bile, if you also, you know, so it's a same shading with vomiting and stuff like that. Okay. That's the taste you get in the back of your throat when you're barfing. Okay. That bile, right? That stinging, stinking smell in your nose. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm going to chunder just thinking about it. Oh, my God.

Please, please block your camera when you do. Yeah, I'll be sure to I'll be sure to cut off the video feed before I do that. So the way to help someone who had an imbalance would be to drain those excess fluids out of them. So you're too happy. Come here. Come here. I'll fix that right now. Right? I'm almost stab you. Yeah. And the thing is, so these ideas carried on into the early 1800s in the West. It was part of why George Washington died so miserably. Yes. It was. Yeah. He needs more pus. Yeah. We got to drain that. So they dragged

beetle carapaces across his neck so that he hived up and it burst open. Oh, God. And then they gave him enemas. Yes. Like he was shitting himself in the bed, hustling from his neck. I believe they made him chunder. They bled him. They were trying everything and it's all humor based. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. I knew that I knew that, you know, doctors dealing with with humor based medicine had been what was responsible for in the end killing him. But that wasn't even what I was thinking of. In the sharp series of novels, there's a villainous Colonel who's just an absolute venal scumbump, just a horrid, horrid individual. And two modern audiences, one of the cues that we get that this guy is, you know, like just off his rocker and violent nasty bad dude, is he has his personal physician with him,

who has the physician has an inventors kind of bent, and he has developed a machine specifically for more efficient bleeding. And the colonel is regularly regularly for the sake of his health and his vigor. He regularly gets himself blood. And and it takes you know, we we. Yeah. Yeah. And and we see him we see him. And it gets described in in graphic detail how the doctor puts this box on his wrist that essentially drags four razor blades across his wrist, you know, deep enough to deep enough to, you know, get a good blood flow going. And then and then bandages is him up and like, and everybody in the room is like, Oh, well, that's a little bit excessive. but okay, you know, health nut. Right. Until just that part right there.

Oh, look at the health nut. Yeah. Slicing his wrists open daily to bleed a little. Like, yeah. And to a modern audience, it's like, oh, my God, he's a fucking madman. Right. Right. Yes. Yeah, it's the fad, though. I mean, it honestly writing that character that way in the modern day would be like, oh, yeah.

And then he went down to his basement to go into a sensory deprivation chamber. Yeah. Or he went into his cryo chamber to like freeze for 20 minutes. Yeah. Like that kind of shit. Yeah. So, God damn. Okay.

So, the way if you want to help someone obviously drain those fluids or you could change their diets if you don't want to be so quick. And then that diet could increase the other humors that they have to bring everything back into balance again. Right. Right. There's two ways, right? You could drain the one that's excessive or you could raise the others to that level.

So if I remember right. Red meat was supposed to help with blood, wasn't it? Yes, of course. OK. Yeah. I'm trying to remember what what the other what the other ones were. Like what what did you do to bring your pile up? It was more acidic foods. Oh, OK. I have things that like tannis in them and stuff like that. Oh, OK. So red things that had like tannous in them and stuff like that. Oh, okay. So red wine. Things that basically burned going down. Like if you had anything spicy, that would be choleric food. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, but also over

time it was a regular thing for doctors to recommend bloodletting. Yeah. Obviously bleeding it out, right? Yeah. Or purging, puking it out to give you an emetic, right? Or catharsis pooping it out, right or diariesis I am I am never gonna look at Greek tragedy again the same way after after after hearing catharsis being used Shit on the stage. I know you're such a method actor. So amazing.

But yeah, there's only so many holes and there's only so many fluids, so you can only have so many seasons, you know. Now, the thing is, if we fast forward to the mid 1600s, so we've gone forward about 2000 years. There were also other theories out there at the time But this one held on Like I said, it led to the death of George Washington as they bled more than 40% of his blood volume out of him to draw out the fevered blood and

Like I said, they raked his neck with dried beetle carapaces to train the pus and they gave him an enema obviously And so like in his final 12 hours, he leaked every fluid out of his body. Oh my god. Yeah. And I kind of don't mind considering how shitty a person he was when it came to slavery. Like a lot of people lionized him still and that's that's all well and good. Yeah, yeah, like, you know, and I get it. I like Led Zeppelin, but. You know, that that doesn't excuse, you know, bringing 13 years of your olds on tour with you. And same thing, you know, like, you know, practicing your bloodletting. Like Washington was a big proponent of bloodletting.

And he practiced it on his enslaved population. Yeah. Regularly. Yeah. But back to humorism. It was it was to medicine what trigonomic tree is to triangles. I think because I slept through that class. But it sounds good.

Yeah. All right. By the mid 1800s, humorism was more and more seen as archaic, though, and not in line with what they were doing. This is still well before doctors agreed that germ theory was the thing and that they should wash their fucking hands. They still believed in my asthma, but they also didn't believe that it upset the balance of fluids in the body anymore. So, you know, progress. Yeah, okay. Yeah. But humorism is still very influential amongst people who were not as scientifically inclined.

So like literally everyone else. Yeah. And with people who spoke with the authority that silence science would allow. So snake charmers, snake oil salesmen. Now, according to the theory of the four temperaments, which absolutely grew out of all of this, one's personality was therefore inherent and tied to these humors, tied to the seasons and tied to how one was

conceived. Okay. I believe you would call this a form of essentialism. Yes. Okay. So one's mood could be impacted by a number of things and a holistic approach would be required. So far, I'm on board. Yeah. For example, we all know that the springtime is not the time to be overly sanguine, as it's already a sanguine time. So too much blood in the body could lead to seizure and an apoplectic fit, or just mania. Thus, to eliminate the excesses of blood, one finds in the spring, like you do, people were advised to lower their intake of blood-rich foods like red meat. Okay.

Yeah. Like, all right. Begging the question is a thing. Yeah. So, you know, we could start with, we all know that spring time is not the time to be overly sanguine. Yeah, do you? Yeah, because it's a sanguine time.

But like after after winter is over, I wouldn't get it as far away from my seasonal effect of depression as I possibly can. So yeah. But would you eat a ton of red meat in the spring or would you eat a ton of red meat in the winter? Let's be real. And the reason you're eating a ton of red meat in the spring? Or would you eat a ton of red meat in the winter? Let's be real. And the reason you're eating a ton of red meat in the mentor is obviously because you want to be more sanguine when, you know, it's it's time to be melancholic or would you eat a

ton of red meat? Yes. The answer is yes. Like, I don't. There's, there's, there's, there's, there's, after that I don't understand. So, that's like, okay, cool. Man, it's, it's so funny how different we are in so many ways.

Like I, I don't remember the last time my kids had to cook something that had read me. Well, yeah, I could probably, I could go into your Facebook feed and go like, oh, yeah, no, your kids cooked, you know, right? This this this set of chops or, you know, chili with, you know, beef in it or something, you know. So if someone had a natural tendency toward being or acting too happy, then they have too much blood and they are just sanguine as fuck.

So we're going to take away their red meat and that'll obviously make them less happy. Exactly. And you might need to instantly. Yeah. Okay. So, and because if diet doesn't help and moving to somewhere that's more dry and colder in the springtime doesn't help, then you're going to have to bleed them.

Jesus Christ. And if a person leans toward being too angry or acting too angry, then they must have too much yellow bile in their system, making them choleric. Yeah. Cut out the spicy foods. Well, no, less mutton. Oh It's Very specific hold on

Like like beef obviously that sanguine mutton though. Yeah, that's that's for the choleric What I will guess because it's a little gamey. I guess yeah, and depending on the mutton it could be it's a little gamey. I guess. Yeah. And depending on the button, it could be more than a little gamey. But like what? I mean, and obviously you're going to have cut out, you know, chili peppers and anything spicy like take all the pepper out of their food clearly. And I guess tell them to cut back on booze. I don't know. I don't know. I just know you get get rid of the mutton and then you move them to a wet and cold area because that'll help.

Oh, yeah, that'd make me a lot less angry. Right. I was going to say one thing that makes people less angry is if they live in London. Yeah. Very healthy. No, I'm I'm going to say no. Very healthy. No. I'm going to say no. And if they're in London and if they're in London and they got to move someplace colder

and wetter. Right. Oh, great. So we're going to send them up to the Orkneys, right? Because like in order to get colder and wetter than London, where the hell are you going to go? Well, I was named a Scotsman who's just known for not being angry. He's known for being phlegmatic. Right. So that's not the stereotype of that culture.

No, nor that weather. Like, no. Although, what's her name? The English author who wrote about the Moors, not the people but like the foggy places out. Oh, uh, um, was it Emily Dickinson? No, no, Dickinson was an American Emily Bronte. Emily Bronte. Yes. Yeah.

Um, she wasn't known for being angry. So I guess it kind of counts. You know, you're going to depress them instead of anger them. Yeah. Well, you know, uh, so wait, melancholic was. Oh, we're going to depress them instead of anger them. Yeah, well, you know, it's a wait. Melancholic was. Oh, we're not there yet. Warm and wet. Melancholic is me. Let me go back.

If you're melancholic, cold and dry. Cold. OK. Because it's a tumble. OK. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So if one keens more toward being or acting sad, then they clearly have too much black bile in their system, making them melancholic. So why don't you help their spleen and get them a humidifier? I couldn't find the dietary necessities for that one either. Now if a person tends to be or acting too calm or too reserved or lethargic, right, then it's clear that they have too much phlegm in their bodies, making them phlegmatic.

So get them somewhere dry and hot or food foods that purge the phlegm. So lots of spice. Okay. That, you know, the that at least makes a little bit of sense. When I was stuffy faced, I would get soup from a Thai. Thai restaurant. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, get some get some really good Mexican food, go to an Indian place. You know, interestingly, saying that It does make a lot of the Racist assumptions of colonizers in regard to people from the global south bank a lot more sense. Yes, it does These things are not they're not unlinked. Yeah, they're not just bumping into each other. Yeah All right, and of course all of these things about your personality can be foretold by how you were conceived So think back to when your dad and your mom were raw dog in it, right, right? I really don't want to but okay dad came right So post post ejaculation. Now, if at that point the womb was warm and moist. Isn't it always like, wait a minute, hold on. Like this is a this is an organ inside

a human body. I think that the British would have found a way to dry a woman up that far. Okay. All right. Like if anybody could. Right. You know. So. So.

So. So. Post ejaculation. If your womb is warm and moist, then there's going to be a preponderance of blood in there. And that means the child will be sanguine in nature. And that, of course, means you have a higher incidence of a kid being a ginger, of course, as one would expect. Oh, that's part of it? Really?

Dently? So I took this to mean now maybe I'm looking at this through Damien colored glasses here. I took this to mean if you took really good care of your partner first. Yeah. Multiple times. And then you came. You would make a ginger child. Okay. Like a brag? That all I ever... Based on that's applying modern scientific understanding of what's the right sexology and modern understanding of how those mechanisms work in the body. Taking our mind.

That's kind of presentism because you're... A little bit. You're... The French, if you go back to like medieval France, they believed that if a woman didn't have an orgasm, she couldn't conceive. Oh, that was actually widespread. Yeah. That was widespread.

Which just led to... That wasn't just the French. But... It just led to a bunch of guys going, you came right? Like nobody actually took the time to figure it out. Yeah, nobody. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then also led to the idea that has reappeared in statements by American politicians, of course, within our lifetime that, you know, it if a woman became pregnant, then it couldn't have been rape. Right, right. Which is like, oh my God, fuck you. Certainly not a legitimate one. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. So that the condition of the womb could be anything but warm and moist. It's it's it's an in I'm still stuck on the fact that it's an internal organ. Like, right? Right.

The definition is it's a it's a it's a squishy bit inside somebody's body. Like, I think I think there is the idea of it. Right. Their idea of it was though that it was some sort of a cavern where the baby would grow into it instead of like it would expand. Yeah. Anyway, you know, the literature back then talked of women as a vessel. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, I know. I know. And in the original, the earliest idea the earliest understanding of human procreation didn't take into account the fact that there was

in fact an egg cell. Right. You know. So yeah, I mean, I get all of that, but still just you mean You mean to tell me somebody can have a cold and dry spot? Well, you've read it. Inside their body. Well, okay. Yeah. That was her soul, not her not her uterus. Right. Well, according to the British, probably in the same spot.

So yeah, I mean, yeah, you know. Now naturally from here. They hear them talk about it, yeah. Yeah, naturally from here came the influence of astrology on the humors as well. Okay. Because everybody wanted to know, you know, what that connection was, which of course led

to English botanist Nicholas Culpepper. Some folks, according to Culpepper, depending on the humor balance of their wombs This is called the on the admixture of the womb and where Scorpio was in the sky. Thus, a melancholic and phlegmatic folks tended toward introversion, whereas the other two are largely extroverts, but I obviously don't need to tell you this, it's as clear as the retrograde on Uranus. I am mature, very mature. That makes sense. So, yeah. So, so now now we're roping astrology into this. Well, yeah, like if you're going to mean, I mean, yeah, you know, if if if ghosts and aliens, there is no what is moving in the direction of being a semi permanent, you know, sinus congestion condition right now because the extra flat mattock. Yeah. I don't, I really don't want to think about what the advice I would get from a doctor would be as to what I need to spend my time doing to

fix this. And there'd be some things you just can't overcome. I mean if your mom's womb was both dry and warm You know right after your dad came in her yeah all those years ago Yeah, you know and who knows how sanguine he was at the time like there's just all kinds of things and I would imagine He was pretty sanguine. I'm gonna say Across across most circumstances That that particular input we can we can mark that on the on the one would hope on the equation Really, oh, yeah. Yeah, King country But also, you know, you got to figure out where, you know, Draco was in the sky at the

time of your conception. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many bad ideas wrapped up in this all together. You think oh my god This is my unified field theory of what are you fucking kidding me? Yes

Wow, okay, but it all leads to Four radical dudes. Yeah, so there we go. All right. Yeah, so and yes, if you were wondering is there a way of explaining temperament and and does that way in make its way into the Kiersey temperament sorter, also known as the KTS? And of course, the answer is yes. And then the Kiersey temperament sorter is the precursor to the Myers-Briggs test that was so hot in the 1990s. Right.

Okay. And Kiersey is where we really see the temperament visions that use terms like Apollonian, Dionysian, Epimethian and Pro-Methian. And he further broke those down into Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, and Rational and each with its own subclass. And the thing is, I love taxonomies like this because I love D&D and similar to D&D. These are made up entirely out of whole cloth and I don't really have any basis or fact or evidence or data to substantiate these things. Yeah. Yeah. Now I am getting ahead of myself. There will be more on this in the next episode. In fact, coming to a close on this one because okay, getting the perfect

break spot soon. Yeah. Historically, though, we do need to get looking at the applications that were actually put into place of humorism, okay, and temperamentism. There's plenty of philosophers that use these categories as a way to describe things about the human experience that makes some sense. You go with archetypical things. And it seems to me that it's it's if it's literally intuitive and fits good narratives, then philosophers and smart folks in the 1600s forward will especially dig it and not not question it as much, making it a blind spot for their own introspection on their own thinking and its possible fallibility and thus they would codify it in a model that otherwise would make plenty of sense. Emmanuel Kant drew upon humorism to explain metaphysics and morality and the nature of

man and so forth. Similarly to how we use Freudian models now, which are also terribly wrong in data parched but also they work for lit theory in all kinds of ways. Yeah, and we use those to explain the same thing. So it's one of those things of like, it's completely wrong, and yet it works as a model. Yeah. And outside of philosophy, there's also the influence on literature. The entire genre of humor is rooted in humorism. Because hey, look at the wacky circumstances that happen when we take the caloric and we

throw him in a room with the phlegmatic and they have to find a way to do X. That's actually a type of play. I know. Yeah. And I believe I cover this toward cover it toward the end. If it ends up showing up in a different podcast. Yeah. Okay. It's actually a type of play of like and it honestly it reminds speak, going all the way back to the beginning, speaking of Twilight Zone episodes, the four strangers stuck in a room. You had the ballerina, the soldier, you know, and on and on. It's very similar or that episode of Star Trek where they're all trapped. You know, you've got the anarchist Jean-Luc Picard, the collaborator, and then the person from Starfleet who is the plant.

Again, you've got these four things, and it keeps coming up. It's a great way to create ensemble casts. It's a great way to pair off two wacky concepts and stick them together, And that's why it becomes a genre. Mm hmm. And and famously, of course, Shakespeare wrote every man in his humor, being one of his lesser known, lesser performed comedies. I was going to say, I don't I don't actually I thought that was a line from a play. No, that's that's actually a play that you wrote. Mm hmm. Yeah, you didn't write all bangers.

I'll tell you that. Well, you know, he swung for the fences every time. Yeah. And that means that when he missed, he really whiffed. Yeah. Yeah. The Reggie Jackson of playwrights. Yes.

So, now this doesn't mean that such things cannot apply to education and impact education. In fact, the more intuitive and data parts that they are, the more that we can imply them, which is why I'm going to stop before I get to Jeremy Irons look alike, Rudolph Steiner. OK. So next episode, I'm going to pick up with the Austrian occultist, Rudolph Steiner.

So you know shit's going to start off great. Oh, man. All right. Steiner. Yeah. All right. So you lean anything or you want to just skip ahead to the recommendations? Just that. This is one of those that this is one of those archetypes that it's been around so long, we don't recognize that it has a source. If that makes sense, the idea of the four archetypes bouncing off of each other, the idea that we have some kind of a template or a personality that we all match up with like a Jungian archetype. I

mean, we know it predates Jung because he was drawing it from somewhere. These things Right. You know, these things that we don't. We don't consider what the actual source of them was. It's it's it's nice to know. No, no, we know where this one starts. We can we can pin this that we can pin this one down in the historical record to this guy. This guy right here. Trace it right through. Yeah. Yeah.

Which which feels. Very satisfying. To me that it's going to work its way through some of the weirdest spots. You're going to be like, oh, shit, that too. So like, it'll be like, oh, there's there's OK. Damien's not going off on some weird conspiracy tangent where he's connecting things that shouldn't be connected despite all of his data. Yeah. But this time you're going to be like, oh, god damn it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like you drips the Yeti sauce down the hall and didn't realize how many times it dripped on the carpet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Yeah. That's it pretty much for me. Well, what are you, what are you recommending as far as reading goes? I'm not going to recommend reading. Okay. I'm actually going to recommend that audiences, our audience find somewhere online. I'm not sure what streaming services might have it available, but I recommend strongly that you look for either. Super dimensional Fortress Macross subbed preferably just because I'm that kind of purist. Dubbed if you can't find it subbed just dubbed if you can't find it subbed or go back and watch find somewhere online and watch the first season of Robotech. Okay. Because it's the same animation, but with

altered storylines being involved. The bigger departures between source material and American adaptation get bigger when you go further down the road of Robotech series. But I'm recommending that because that's my next topic is going to have to do with that. And on top of that, any excuse to go back and watch the Macross saga, I highly recommend. It's an amazing example of what Japanese animators were doing in the early 80s. It's a great example of the real robot genre within giant robot animation. And I'll never forget, my father watched a couple of episodes of it with me when I was nine. And he at the end of like the second episode, he said, all right, they did a really good job of making that not look like a soap opera, even though it totally is one like. And I was so offended, but it's totally true. So that's my recommendation.

Find either Superdimensional Fortress Macross, if you can, or the first season. Of Robotech, the Macross saga. So OK, What about you? I'm going to actually recommend something that is accessible because I did a quick search. None of those things are available on any streaming service that I could find. Seriously, seriously, so they will have to buy this.

All right, that sucks. Yeah. All right. Well, but mine, my dad, actually going to be tied to what we're just talking about here. Go watch the first season of Bad Batch Okay, yeah a lot of humorism so yeah, yeah, so yeah, all right, um, where can they find this podcast? Well, they've already found it for one thing. But if they want to find it again, we can be found on the Apple podcast app or on Spotify. And of course, we have our website, Wabba Wabba Wabba dot geekhistorytime.com. Wherever it is that you have found us,

please hit the subscribe button. Please give us the five star review that you know Damien's meticulous research deserves Also, it'll help him maintain his humors and prevent the the lack bile from overcoming him. We don't want him becoming any more melancholic than he already is So Yeah and becoming any more melancholic than he already is. So, yeah, those are the places that I know we can be found. I will say there is a place I can be found. I have left the hellscape that is Twitter. And I can be found on Blue sky if you have somehow managed to find an invitation

To blue sky I can be found there at EH play lock on blue sky So if you have anything you want to yell at Damien about you can message me there and I will yell at him for you There we go. Gladly And of course March 1st at the Comedy Spot Capital Punishment, making its trampoline return. So get your tickets now. Hell, yes. All right. Well, for Geek History of Time, I'm Damien Harmony.

And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, Cowabunga, dudes.