A dense, challenging work, drawing on philosophy, the cognitive sciences and the histories of science, medicine and...
A scholarly examination of the persistence throughout history of thinking that personality and body type are linked to the presence in the body of four “humours.”
Warm moist blood; cold, moist phlegm; warm, dry yellow bile; and cold, dry black bile were the humours identified by ancient Greeks, most famously the physician Hippocrates. The system he formulated was spread beyond Greece by Galen, a Roman physician and scholar living in Asia Minor in the first century. Galen’s writings were preserved in the Arab world and then translated by Christian monks during the Middle Ages. As the medical philosophy of ancient Greece was adopted in the West, the humoural tradition guided medical practice and provided a sense of self-understanding. Tracing the history of ideas about the relation between mind and body from ancient Greece to the present day, Arikha shows how the idea of humoural balance offered not just medical guidance but moral guidance. By living a balanced life, people could control their passions, their bodies, their fate. This system linking moral vigor and physical health also contained elements of astrology and magic, helping to explain how material humours could affect an immaterial soul. Just as the old humours provided useful images for understanding our insides and our tempers, the author suggests, their contemporary equivalents—hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters, etc.—provide a partial picture of the same psychological and physical realities. Scientists are still struggling to bridge the gap between what is known and what is not known about the body, the brain and the mind. As Arikha puts it, the humoural system reminds us that the best scientists and doctors are those who recognize how little they know; its history is “the underside of our present perplexities.”
A dense, challenging work, drawing on philosophy, the cognitive sciences and the histories of science, medicine and psychology.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-073116-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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