Bob

“Hippocrates’s theory of the humors, which was perpetuated by Galen. The theory held that the body possessed four fluids, or humors, which corresponded to the four elements from which all material being was composed: earth (black bile), fire (yellow bile), water (phlegm), and air (water). A predominance of one humor affected an individual’s temperament, so a warm, happy, extroverted personality was associated with blood. A choleric, fiery temperament indicated a predominance of yellow bile (khole in Greek), while a melancholic or dark disposition was caused by the predominance of black bile. Finally, a phlegmatic temperament was due to an excess of phlegm. It was believed that an individual in good health enjoyed a balance of the four humors and that illness was an expression of imbalance.”
― Charles River Editors, The Byzantine Empire and the Plague: The History and Legacy of the Pandemic that Ravaged the Byzantines in the Early Middle Ages

“The grievances felt by the peasant were many and deep, and he was not always averse to voicing them or even to acting upon them violently. But he typically vented his feelings of protest upon the immediate agents of misfortune—above all the landlord—and exempted the tsar himself from blame. For was not the tsar surrounded by ministers and counselors who deceived him and kept him in ignorance of the people’s sufferings? Such was the peasant’s line of reasoning, and it must have imparted a special poignancy to another of his proverbs: “God is high above, and the tsar is far away.”
― Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary: A Study in History and Personality, 1879-1929

“Needless to say, these treatments were not effective, but that didn’t stop the Western world from using techniques like bloodletting for another 1,300 years,”
― Charles River Editors, The Byzantine Empire and the Plague: The History and Legacy of the Pandemic that Ravaged the Byzantines in the Early Middle Ages

“Character and motivation are not static qualities; they undergo growth and change in lives normally marked by crucial junctures and times of future-determining decision. Moreover, the selfhood or (in Erikson’s phrase) “psychosocial identity” formed in youth has a prospective or programmatic dimension. It comprises not simply an individual’s sense of who and what he is, but also his goals—his clear or inchoate beliefs about what he can, should, and will achieve. Hence later biographical vicissitudes cannot but impinge upon personality profoundly. Fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the inner life-scenario necessarily affects the individual’s relationship to himself, and this is something that lies at the core of personality. It is likewise bound to affect his relations with other persons significant to him and thereby, perhaps, his and their lives as a whole.”
― Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary: A Study in History and Personality, 1879-1929