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  • 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

Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark

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

  • Article

Public health campaigns and the ‘threat’ of disability

By continuing to represent disability as the feared outcome of disease, public health campaigns help to perpetuate prejudice against disabled people.

  • Book extract

You know the drill

Richard Barnett opens wide the true meaning of a healthy mouth.

All stories (12)

Images

  • Four heads of men who each exhibit one of the four temperaments: (clockwise from top left) lymphatic, sanguine, bilious, and nervous. Engraving by W. Johnson and A.K. Johnson, early 19th century.
  • Four heads of men who each exhibit one of the four temperaments: (clockwise from top left) lymphatic, sanguine, bilious, and nervous. Engraving by W. Johnson and A.K. Johnson, early 19th century.
  • Cybele wearing a turreted crown and holding a sceptre; in the background men work on the land; representing Earth, one of the four elements. Engraving by J. Sadeler, 1587, after D. Barendsz.
  • Four distinctive and elaborately adorned women presenting a queen with many riches; representing Europe, Asia, Africa and America bearing the natural bounty of the world to an allegorical figure. Line engraving.
  • The gnarled hands of 'sin' reaching out towards a woman in a figure-hugging dress representing 'lust' with a couple and a figure of death beside a grave; one of 4 drawings by students of C. C. Sweeting Senior High School, Nassau, Bahamas for World AIDS Day, November 1993. Photocopy reproduced from a drawing, 1993.
  • A line-drawn male nude figure with one arm leaning against a surface and his head turned representing an advertisement for two discussion groups organised by Kursiv on the occasion of the International AIDS conference in Berlin. Photocopy, ca. 1993.
  • Yoruba Ibedji (effigies) representing dead twins, Nigeria, West Africa. Some Yoruba tribes revere twins, who are thought to bring luck to household and tribe. The death of one is a great calamity. A wooden figure, called Ibedji, is made to house the spirit of the dead child and be a companion for the surviving twin. The Ibedji figure becomes a cult-object in the family and the mother tends it, offers it food and decks it with beads, cowrie shells, red camwood and other adornments.
  • A line-drawn male nude standing figure with one arm raised to his shoulder, the other down by his side representing an advertisement for a lecture on the possibilities and limitations of naturopathic treatment of HIV and AIDS with Dr. Misha Ruth Cohen, San Francisco, Dr. of Oriental Medicine, Quan Yin Healing Center and Dr. Juliane Sacher, Frankfurt, naturopathic physician with a focus on treating HIV and AIDS; an event organised by Kursiv, an AIDS project for Schwulenberatung on Tuesday, 4 May [1993?]. Photocopy.
  • Two black line-drawn figures, one wearing a blue ribbon representing an advertisement for the Japanese Stop AIDS Fund, part of the Foundation for AIDS Prevention. Colour lithograph, ca. 1998.
  • Two black line-drawn figures, one wearing a blue ribbon representing an advertisement for the Japanese Stop AIDS Fund, part of the Foundation for AIDS Prevention. Colour lithograph, ca. 1998.
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