478 



0N TEMPEKAMENTS, 



attempt to move a mile-stone : and possessing withal, so little imagination, 

 that the delirium of a fever would never raise him to the regions of a bril- 

 liant fancy. They beheld one man for ever courting enterprise and dan- 

 ger ; another distinguished for comprehensive judgment and sagacity of 

 intellect : one peculiarly addicted to wine ; a second to gallantry, and a 

 third to both : one generous to profligacy ; another frugal to meanness ; 

 and a few, amidst the diversified crowd, with a mind so happily attempered 

 and balanced by nature, that education has httle to correct, and is almost 

 limited to the act of expanding and strengthening the budding faculties as 

 they show themselves. 



The physiologists of Greece, and especially the medical physiologists, did 

 not rest here. They attempted to cluster the different species of idiosyn- 

 crasies, or particular constitutions that had any resemblance to each other, 

 and to arrange them into genera, which were denominated erases (jt^acjjs) 

 or temperaments. We have the express testimony of Galen,* that Hip- 

 pocrates was the founder of this system. He conceived the state or con- 

 dition of the animal frame to be chiefly influenced by the nature and pro- 

 portion of its radical fluids, at least, far more so than by those of its solids. 

 The radical fluids he supposed to be four, the elementary materials of which 

 were furnished by the stomach, as the common receptacle of the food ; but 

 each of which is dependent upon a peculiar organ for its specific produc- 

 tion or secretion. Thus the blood he asserted to be furnished by the heart ; 

 tiie phlegm, lymph, or finer watery fluid, by the head ; the yellow bile by 

 the gall-duct ; and the black bile by the spleen. The perfection of health, 

 or hygeia, as the Greeks denominated it, he conceived to result from a 

 due proportion of these fluids to each other ; and the different tempera- 

 ments or predispositions of the body, to peculiar constitutions or idiosyn- 

 crasies, from a disturbance of the balance, and a preponderating secretion 

 or influence of any one of them over the rest. 



Hence Hippocrates established four genera of temperaments, which h^ 

 denominated from the respective fluids whose superabundance he appre- 

 hended to be the cause of them, the bilious or cholekic, produced by a 

 surplus of yellow bile, and dependent on the action of the gall-duct or 

 liver ; the atrabiliary or melancholic, produced by a surplus of black 

 bile, and dependent upon the action of the spleen ; the sanguineous, pro- 

 duced by a surplus of blood, and dependent upon the action of the heart ; 

 and the phlegmatic, produced by a surplus of phlegm, lymph, or fine 

 watery fluid, dependent upon the action of the brain. 



This arrangement of Hippocrates continued in great favour with physi- 

 ologists, and with very little variation, till the beginning of the last century, 

 at which time it was warmly supported in all its bearings by the quaint but 

 solid learning of Sir John Floyer.j And even to the present hour, not- 

 withstanding all the changes that have taken place in the science of phy- 

 siology, anatomy, and medicine, and the detection of some erroneous rea- 

 sonings and opinions in the writings of Hippocrates upon this subject, in- 

 termixed with much that is admirable and excellent, — it has laid afounda^ 

 tion for all the systems of temperaments, constitutions, or natural charac- 

 ters, that have more lately been ofl^ered to the world. Most of these, how- 

 ever, have been distinguished by an introduction of five other genera, de- 

 nominated a WARM, a COLD, a dry, a moist, and a NERyous or irritable tem- 



* De Temperament, ii. p. 60. § b. 



t See, his Physician's {Pulse- Watch ; or an Essay to explain the Old Art of Feeling tlic 

 Pulse, and to improye it by the Help of the pulse- watch. 2 vols. 8yo. t^ond. 1707. 



