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What are the four humors?

The four humors are bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The concept dates to the ancient Greeks and the Greek philosopher-physician Hippocrates (c. 460–377 B.C.), to whom the treatise (a formal writing) Nature of Man has been attributed. In this work, the author asserted that illness is caused by an imbalance of the four humors. Blood was thought to come from the heart, phlegm from the brain, yellow bile from the liver, and black bile from the spleen. The Greeks believed that a person would be healthy if these humors were in balance. Although modern medicine eventually proved this idea to be false, it lasted for many centuries. During the Middle Ages (A.D. c. 450–c. 1500), each humor came to have different characteristics. A person with ruddy (reddish) skin was thought to possess too much blood and would therefore have a cheerful, optimistic personality. A slow and impassive...

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1. Origins
   1. How did early humans cure illness and disease?
   2. Who was the first doctor in history?
   3. What is the Hippocratic Oath?
   4. What are the four humors?
   5. When did biological warfare originate?
   6. Were there hospitals before the Middle Ages?
   7. When was the first North American hospital built?
   8. What advances were made in medicine during the Renaissance?
   9. How old is the concept of public health?
   10. What is Gray's Anatomy?
2. Modern Medicine
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   2. Who invented vaccination?
   3. When did modern surgery begin?
   4. When was anesthesia first used?
   5. What surgical advances were introduced in the late twentieth century?
   6. Who introduced the use of antiseptics in hospitals?
   7. What are Louis Pasteur's contributions to the study of disease?
   8. When were antibiotics invented?
   9. Why are new antibiotics constantly being developed?
   10. Why is Florence Nightingale famous?
   11. When was the International Red Cross founded?
   12. Who discovered the X ray?
   13. Who was Clara Barton?
   14. What were the Curies' contributions to medicine?
   15. How did Jonas Salk and Albert B. Sabin save lives?
   16. When did the first heart transplant take place?
   17. When was the first test-tube baby born?
   18. When was the first kidney transplant?
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   22. What was the first disease conquered by humans?
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   24. Who was Typhoid Mary?
   25. Has the flu ever reached epidemic proportions?
   26. What are CT and MRI scans?
3. Psychology
   1. Why are Pavlov's dogs famous?
   2. What is behaviorism?
   3. What were Sigmund Freud's contributions to the study of human psychology?
   4. What does the term "Jungian" mean?
   5. Who was Dorothea Dix
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