The Third Digestion: The Four Humors

The early conception with disease and sickness was viewed as a punishment from a god(s). It was more of superstition and myths that primitive people based the reasoning of why a person, or why people were getting sick. As time went on people started to evolve and started using science to try and justify why people were getting sick. In which people started thinking that the cause of disease was due to miasma. They started to assume that there were invisible vapors that floated in the air and people inhaled it.

The Greeks made many influences to their medical practices as well as ours today. Hippocrates was one of the many doctors at the time and he made many new discoveries in medicines which really helped people live longer and made his procedures a lot easier. He was a very trustworthy doctor. He made an oath stating that he wouldn't do anything to put his patients in harm by giving them bad medicines. Instead, he swore to do everything possible to cures patients and help make them feel better. This was known as the Hippocrates Oath (Doc 4). Even to this day, doctors must swear to not do anything that can cause harm to their patients. It's part of their training while in medical school. The only time a doctor can "harm" his or her patients is when the patient signs a

The Greeks were the first to realize that diseases were caused by reactions to certain things and could be cured by certain medicine. Before this diseases were thought of as punishments from the Gods. Also physicians developed an oath among all doctors that created systems like doctor-patient confidentiality. (Ancient History Lists). The Greeks showed us that medicine is a two-fold process. There is the need to understand disease and healing, and there is also a need to regulate the practice of medicine and the ethics involved.

Hippocrates main concepts are derived from the fact that this disease originates from a natural cause. He states , "Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder...this notion of divinity is kept up by their inability to comprehend it (33-35)." It was this 'sacred disease' of epilepsy that people used to connect with divine interference. Divine stimulation was never in form of a sickness or disease. These people were under the idea that sickness was not a sole presence, but rather an ailment that affects the human body and is sent by divinities. Therefore people did little to treat the affected, but rather tried to appease the so-called divine powers that sent the disease. In fact, the epileptic attacks were often referred to different gods depending on the symptoms such as Poseidon, Ares, Apollo, and Hecate.

During Ancient times, cure and prevention of illness and disease were not very well developed – people would blame their ill health on Gods, witches, demons or other supernatural causes. They had many theories, such as God punishing them for their sins.

Before logical thought was regularly applied to functions of the human body, people made sense of daily misfortunes by attributing them to the moods and wills of the gods. In the minds of the Greek, afflictions were the result of disobedience and to live in good health was a blessing that only divine intervention could provide (History of Medicine 1). Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing, was often the one called upon in times of need. Asclepian temples were constructed in Greece and in the surrounding areas, and these sites of worship also became the centers of healing; Ill Grecians undertook lengthy pilgrimages to the temples in hopes that the God’s supposed restorative powers could ameliorate their tribulations (Greek Medicine 1). An orator at that time, Aeschines reported his encounter with godly healing by praising Asclepius: “No longer counting upon mortal skill, I placed all my hope in divinity. I came, Asclepius, into your sacred wood and I was cured in three of a wound I had in my head for a year” (Palatine Anthology 13). When cures were not left up to the divine, the rituals to rid a body of disease were primitive and mainly consisted of attempts to expel demons (Longrigg 14-16). Although the idea that sickness and religion are intertwined is

For many centuries, religious, spiritual and cultural beliefs preponderated societal actions and beliefs for those with mental illnesses. In ancient Greece, those with severe mental illnesses were abused because of the perpetuating belief that angry gods influenced them. Those suffering from mild mental illness faced disdain and humiliation. Prince (2003) even asserts “the cultural values of ancient Greece were precursors to the modern stigma that is associated with mental illness” (Kirby & Keon, 2004). In the middle ages, it was the belief that mental illness was routed to supernatural causes. It was believed that these individuals should be burned at the stake, hanged or decapitated to release their soul from being possessed by demons. The beliefs changed in the 17th and early 18th centuries to one that the physical state was impaired by those with mental illnesses because they had excessive passion they inflicted on themselves. These individuals were often physically restrained

What are the three sections of the large intestine and what roles does each play in digestion or absorption?

For this period any understanding of bacteria was astoundingly advanced. The knowledge of Ancient Egyptians began to pave the way to other developing societies and where we stand today. Their achievements of human body and ailments even made the greeks envious and they soon began taking egyptian knowledge into their own hands. The Greeks like the egyptians were very serious about their religious practices. Priest in ancient greece were trained in simple surgery and herbal remedies. Ancient philosopher named Hippocrates discovered an idea that was quite radical at that time. Built on the idea that the egyptians started, he predicted that perhaps illness may not only be caused by the gods but also for natural reasons. Hippocrates titles this the theory of the four humors which focused on the body consisting of four liquids; blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. If these four humor were in balance you were healthy and if they were out of balance you were sick and needed to be treated accordingly. The idea of the gods not being the reason for everything was revolutionary in the fact that now societies could be examining topics in a more scientific

The roots of mental illnesses can even be traced all back to Ancient Greece in 400 B.C. where people were believed to have been cursed by the gods when their minds were plagued by these things.

answers though science, the Greeks thought that sickness was a punishment and healing a gift from

A perch’s eating habits are to eat anything that swims (insect larvae, crustaceans), including their own relatives (cannibalism) (Painter 2002). Perch have sharp teeth to break down the tough food before using the tongue to swallow the food to start the digestion process. The esophagus is where the digestion process begins. Then the food is moved to the stomach to breakdown the food furthermore. After the stomach, the digesta goes to the pyloric caeca, which has glands that secretes digestive enzymes and absorb nutrients from the digested food. After the pyloric caeca, the digesta goes to the small intestines connecting to the anus. The perch produces bile in the liver for storing nutrients, fat breakdown, and blood protein breakdown. In the small intestines the gall bladder secretes the bile to help the digestive process (Dearolf 2005). After leaving the small intestines, the waste exits through the anus. Now, we will discuss the last dissected organism, the fetal pig, which resembles closet to the human digestive system. The food is broken down by teeth into bolus and has a large intestinal tract to increase the absorption of the nutrients from food and plants. Food passes through four regions in the stomach, starting from the superior to the inferior regions (esophageal, cardiac, fundic, and pyloric). Cardiac is where mucus is secreted while the fundic region is where digestive processes occur

A Voluptuary during the Horrors of Digestion is not as visually stunning as Rembrandt painting, but it is European in origin and detail oriented. When “A voluptuary during the horrors of digestion” is examined at a glance the drawing is simply an obese man who is eating away his issues, but the purpose of the drawing is for an ulterior motive. This illustration can be examined from several different perspectives, such as finding a deeper understanding of the artistic style, the historical background that inspired it, or simply an evaluation to understand the story that is trying to be illustrated.

The ancient Greeks viewed mental illness as having derived from the gods (Griffith 625; Ludwig 4; Neihart; Weisberg 361). According to them, different forms of madness provoked various types

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