“Having a body is unfair”, I remind my witch over an iced latte we share.
“And not having one is not really an option”, she adds.
What a terrible world we live in.
Since I am recovering from a morning that has smelled like sanitizers and might in the end have meant nothing at all, I want to dive into what having a healthy body meant in the time of my witch. What kind of conceptions, requirements, and treatments did she have to live with? Would I like to switch places with her?
“My time was much too bloody for you”, Layla giggles into my ear as I type this. “I bet you couldn’t take it.”
I make a face, but maybe she’s right.
Let’s see.
My witch was alive during the 17th century. It’s an interesting time to read and write about, because it is widely perceived as an age for change in the European history (and actually not just there). The scientific revolution transformed our understanding of the universe, and the religious wars throughout Europe changed our political system. While all of this sounds like new ideas to slowly progress into a better understanding and better treatment of any kind of problem in the world, the reality might have looked a lot more messy, and a lot of old things prevailed. Even the most common and used theory of body, health, and medicine has survived from classical Greece through all of the middle ages!
Humoral theory
The idea that the state of the body, and therefor any condition of health, can be fully explained through four basic body humors is not a new idea. This theory was the basis for medicine in the medieval world, not just among European scholars. It dates back to the works of Galen, who was influenced by Hippocrates. So, it has its roots in the ancient world.
According to this theory, there are four basic humors, which are often also described as fluids. Blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Not just your physical health, but also your mental state and even your personality can be explained by your very personal combination of humors, and was based on the humor the most present in you. Your personal temper depended on the complexion (here: combination) of the humors: your temperament.
Temperaments
Were you a person with more blood than others, you were called a “sanguine” type, and your personality was seen as easily amused and happy, a state associated with childlike behavior. Your element was that of air, and the season you were most compared with was that of spring, because blood is warm. Children in general were sorted into this category.
If yellow bile was most dominant, a person was described as a “choleric” type. This tempter was full of strength and fire, but sometimes went a bit too far. The element associated is fire, since yellow bile is warm and dry. Men were in general sorted into this category.
There could also be people with black bile being the most present, and those were the “Melancholic”. Cold and dry, this temper is associated with autumn, but also with mental states of intense sadness and stagnation. Adults in general were at risk to fall into this category, across all sex and gender. It was associated with earth as an element.
The fourth category, dominated by phlegm, was similar, but not as dry, which probably made it much easier to bear. Women were sorted into this one, with their mind being mostly calm and quiet, never to take action. The season associated is winter, because it’s cold, and the element water, because it’s wet.
“So girls gotta be wet?”, I ask my witch.
“If not, you were damaging yourself.”
Yea, right. God, how girls can giggle.
It deserves more attention what kind of assumption about women linger in this concept.
But first of all, it’s important to acknowledge that these categories are not fully fixed. It was possible for any adult to appear sanguine, and for a woman to have more yellow bile. Men could lose all their fire and become melancholic, and especially at old age, they could turn into the phlegmatic type as well. This was all possible, and actually easy to assess. People often contacted their doctors by stating their temper, and if not, doctors judged by themselves. There are doctor’s notes stating that they had been consulted by a “sanguine woman”, or had received a letter from a “melancholic young man”.
So, these categories were flexible and could change throughout a lifetime.
And here hides the problem I would like to address: Some changed were bad.
Yes, some changes were so bad, they could turn you into something else. They could turn you into something you were not supposed to be. And there definitely was a point of no return. In theory, you could change so far that you not be saved.
But of course, this is a very extreme case. Mostly, any undesired state of either body or mind was treated with a special diet. The cause for almost anything was mostly seen in the body not processing (“cooking”) the food correctly, and so the doctors (or whoever was treating you, because doctors in a classical sense were not the ones dealing with normal patients) tried to modify your diet. Did that no help, blood letting (opening a vane and letting it bleed for a certain amount of time) was a common treatment, and can be seen as an attempt to mess with you bodily fluid until your humoral complexion went back to normal.
However, since your complexion was tied to your temperament, your way of living was of importance. And this is were it gets tricky.
People were aware that emotions could mess with your humors. Rage could make your face turn red, because your blood was rising. Becoming melancholic was associated with a white face and less physical activity.
The consequence of this was that not all emotions were thought suitable for each temper. A cold and wet women determined mostly by phlegm was not supposed to feel things to make her blood rise. Rage, euphoria, lust – all of these things had to be controlled, kept at bay. Men, being warm and dry, were supposed to feel these things and act upon them, and were seen as unwell if shy and quiet. Doctors even wrote manuals on how to deal with emotions in the different tempers. This could even include a list of how and in which order to bring bad news to the different temperaments. On the other, there was a more general believe that emotions could cause illness, not only based on humors. Fear, for example, was seen as a reason for the plague to spread, because being a in fear of the plague meant being in fear of dying and facing god after all. In “Malleus Maleficarum” it is described that women are more easily manipulated by the moon, because of their wetness. Peoples humors were exposed to the world around, and you could mess them up until a point of no return.
In all of this, there was a point of no return, and that’s why the combination of health and your personality and emotional life is a very risky one. Once your way of living has been immoral for a longer period of time, your complexion will never recover. A woman leaving her cold and wet existence behind and giving in to emotions heating her up may dry out and become a melancholic. A man losing his fire and becoming cold might end up there as well (he was already dry). And in the worst of all cases, you might even have such confused humors, you may turn into something else. You may turn into a new, dark, and damaged kind of being, and probably face the fate of a witch.
Although this did not happen everyday, the risk was inherent in every understanding of health and treatment the time of my witch had to offer. Your morality, your emotions, and the environment you were exposed to, could mess with the very core of your being, and could turn you into something else.
I personally think that this way of moralizing illness works on a different level than similar narratives we face today. Of course, your health today is seen as your own responsibility as well. If you eat badly and don’t work out, you can be blamed for your later diabetes. But either way, I think that this moralization of emotions worked on another level than anything we see today. By feeling things you’re feeling, you could turn into a monster, and fall out of the grace of god forever.
“I wonder just how many women might have fallen into melancholia simply because keeping up their phlegmatic life style made them ill”, I think out loud, and m witch blushes as if she knows too much about that.
Stolberg, Michael: Homo patiens. Krankheits- und Körpererfahrung in der Frühen Neuzeit, Köln 2003.
Henry, John: The Scientific Revolution, in: Morus, Iwan Rhys (Hg.): The Oxford History of Science,
Oxford 2023, 148-180.
Duden, Barabara: Geschichte unter der Haut. Ein Eisenacher Arzt und seine Patientinnen um 1730,
Stuttgart 1987.
Eckart, Wolfgang Uwe: Geschichte, Theorie und Ethik der Medizin, 9. Aufl., Heidelberg 2021.
Mistress witch writes 