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  • Article

Shakespeare and the four humours

Blood. Phlegm. Black bile. Yellow bile. The theory of the four humours informed many of Shakespeare's best-known characters, including the phlegmatic Falstaff.

  • Article

Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark

Hamlet clearly demonstrates an excess of black bile and is arguably the most famous literary melancholic.

  • Article

Shakespeare’s cholerics were the real drama queens

In Shakespeare’s times, people’s personalities were categorised by four temperaments. The choleric temperament was hot-tempered and active.

  • Article

Thalidomide survivors in the 21st century

As thalidomide survivors enter their 60s, they look back on their lives and the legacy of the thalidomide catastrophe.

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Images

  • The four qualities, elements, humours and temperaments. Drawing, 19--.
  • Dr. Morses, Compound Syrup of Yellow Dock Root : the great blood purifier : cures all humours.
  • The four elements, four qualities, four humours, four seasons, and four ages of man. Airbrush by Lois Hague, 1991.
  • The four elements, four qualities, four humours, four seasons, and four ages of man. Airbrush by Lois Hague, 1991.
  • A bath-house containing six men and an onlooker, perhaps an allegory of the four humours and five senses. Photolithograph after A. Dürer, c. 1496.
  • The preternatural state of animal humours described, by their sensible qualities, which depend on the different degrees of their fermentation. And the cure of each particular cacochymia ... To this treatise are added two appendixes. I. About the nature of fevers ... II. Concerning the effervescence tumours, pains, and fluxes of humours ... expecially those in the gout and asthma ... of several cocochymia's [sic] / ... By the author of the ... [i.e. Sir John Floyer].
  • Fowke & Aston's improved diuretic balls : for swelled legs, grease, cracked heels, gravel, and affections of the kidneys, for removing all obstructions in the urinary passages, and humours of the eyes, or any other part of the body ... / prepared only by Fowke & Aston.
  • A wife, her physiognomy expressing good temper and humour according to Lavater. Drawing, c. 1789.
  • Twenty five medical conditions humourously illustrated. Coloured etching.
  • Four medical conditions humourously illustrated. Reproduction of an etching.
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Events

  • Workshop

Humour and Peril in Public Health Posters

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