on, 1608, p. 2. Edited by
Francis R. Packard, New York, 1920, p. 132. Harington's book
originally appeared dated: London 1607. (Hoe copy in the
Henry E. Huntington Library.)

According to Littre, there is nowhere so strong a statement of these
views in the genuine works of Hippocrates, but they are found at
large in the Hippocratic writings, and nothing can be clearer than the
following statement from the work "The Nature of Man": "The body of
man contains in itself blood and phlegm and yellow bile and black bile,
which things are in the natural constitution of his body, and the
cause of sickness and of health. He is healthy when they are in
proper proportion between one another as regards mixture and force and
quantity, and when they are well mingled together; he becomes sick when
one of these is diminished or increased in amount, or is separated in
the body from its proper mixture, and not properly mingled with all the
others." No words could more clearly express the views of disease which,
as I mentioned, prevailed until quite recent years. The black bile,
melancholy, has given us a great word in the language, and that we have
not yet escaped from the humoral pathology of Hippocrates is witnessed
by the common expression of biliousness--"too much bile"--or "he has a
touch of the liver." The humors, imperfectly mingled, prove irritant in
the body. They are kept in due proportion by the innate heat which, by
a sort of internal coction gradually changes the humors to their proper
proportion. Whatever may be the primary cause of the change in the
humors manifesting itself in disease, the innate heat, or as Hippocrates
terms it, the nature of the body itself, tends to restore conditions to
the norm; and this change occurring suddenly, or abruptly, he calls the
"crisis," which is accomplished on some special day of the disease, and
is often accompanied by a critical discharge, or by a drop in the body
temperature. The evil, or superabundant, humors were discharged and
this view of a special materies morbi, to be got rid of by a natural
processor a crisis, dominated pathology until quite recently.
Hippocrates had a great belief in the power of nature, the vis
medicatrix naturae, to restore the normal state. A keen observer and
an active practitioner, his views of disease, thus hastily sketched,
dominated the profession for twenty-five centuries; indeed, echoes of
his theories are still heard in the schools,