Humors were an ancient Greek and Roman medical concept for the various substances that determined human health: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Psychical and mental ailments were thought to be the result of an imbalance between these humors, which also effected a given person’s character and attitude toward life. Humorism slowly began to fall out of fashion in the seventeenth century and was medically disproven by the nineteenth century.
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Humors Term Timeline in Tristram Shandy
The timeline below shows where the term Humors appears in Tristram Shandy. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1: Chapters 1-5
...the circumstances of his gestation affected his temperament and personality, particularly in form of his humors and animal spirits, and he muses on how he could have been different. Indeed, Tristram...
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Book 4: Chapters 19-24
...true intention of the book, he argues, is to counteract the spleen and the bitter humors it produces.
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