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Although the principles were changed and adapted over time, essentially, according to this idea, there were four humours in the body: yellow bile, black bile (also known as choler), phlegm and blood. There were four corresponding temperaments - you could be phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholy.
Melancholia or melancholy (from Greek: µέλαινα χολή melaina chole, [1] meaning black bile) [2] is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval, and premodern medicine in Europe that describes a condition characterized by markedly depressed mood, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions.
Those with too much yellow bile were choleric, and those with too much black bile were melancholic. The idea of human personality based on humors contributed to the character comedies of Menander and, later, Plautus .
noun. : the one of the four humors (see humor entry 1 sense 2c) in ancient and medieval physiology that was believed to be cold and dry and to cause melancholy and cowardice. Examples of black bile in a Sentence.
In the ancient physiological theory still current in the European Middle Ages and later, the four cardinal humours were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile); the variant mixtures of these humours in different persons determined their “complexions,” or “temperaments,” their physical and mental qualities, and ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Choleric is the adjectival form of the noun choler, which in humorless-humor use refers to yellow bile, a substance believed to be secreted by the liver and to cause the general anger and irritability more formally known as irascibility.
Blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile: the body’s four humours were believed to control your personality in Shakespeare’s day and influenced the way the Bard created some of his most famous characters.
