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Before we discuss the practical side of humoral dietetics, I’d like to give you a bunch of names and dates related to the history of the theory I’ve just summarised. If you’re easily bored by such details, then you can just skip this section.
If you’re still here, then I’m inviting you to yet another voyage through time and space, all the way to Croton, a Greek town at the tip of the Italian Boot, in the earlier half of the 5th century BCE. The town’s intellectual and religious life is dominated by the sect of Pythagoreans. Yes, this is a time when celebrity mathematicians are a thing. Sadly, after '''Pythagoras''' had died, his followers were quick to turn his science into a dogmatic religion, which they observe by worshipping numbers and by refraining from eating meat and legumes. Instead of elegant mathematical proofs, they’re now content with “the Master said so” as an argument. A few, however, preferring to think for themselves, have managed to wriggle themselves out of the cult. Among them is '''Empedocles Empedoclës of Acraga''', a Greek colony on Sicily. What he’s particularly interested in is the structure of matter. Earlier thinkers, who lived in Ionia on the western shore of what will once be called Turkey, were trying to identify the primordial substance, from which all other matter derives, proposing various specific elements: '''Thales Thalës of Miletus''' suggested water; '''Heraclitus of Ephesus''', fire; '''Xenophanes Xenophanës of Colophon''', earth… EmpedoclesEmpedoclës, who proved the existence of air in a simple experiment with a water clock, tried to reconcile them all by proposing not one, but four primordial substances, that is, ''earth, water, air'' and ''fire''. It will take one more generation for '''Plato''' to add ''aether'' to this number, so that he can assign to each of the five elements one of the five regular polyhedra, including the recently discovered dodecahedron.
<nomobile>[[File:Anagni 2.JPG|thumb|left|Yet another infographic illustrating the relations between elements and seasons (outer circles), and humours and stages of human life (inner circles enclosing a human figure). This one comes from the 13th century and can be found on the ceiling of a crypt in the cathedral of Anagni, Italy. On the wall below you can see Hippocrates Hippocratës (ca. 460 BCE – ca. 370 BCE) conferring with Galen (129 CE – ca. 216 CE).]]</nomobile>
<mobileonly>[[File:Capo Colonna2 retouched.png|thumb|The single remaining standing column from the temple of Hera built in Croton in the 5th century BCE]]</mobileonly>
In the meantime, another former Pythagorean, who was born here, in Croton, and who goes by the name '''Alcmeon''', is doing natural philosophy with a medical bent. Dissecting human corpses is forbidden for religious reasons, but his studies on animal eyes and brains, have led him to the conclusion that it’s the brain, rather than the heart, that is the seat of mind and emotions. Similarly to the Pythagoreans, Alcmeon views the world as a constant struggle of opposites. This includes the human body, where ''warmth'' competes against ''coldness'', ''moistness'' against ''dryness'', and so forth. A balance between them all is what keeps you in good health, while the predominance of any one quality leads to illness.
'''Hippocrates Hippocratës of Kos''', born about half a century after Alcmeon, will eventually combine the latter’s theory with Empedocles’s Empedoclës’s by assigning one humour (including the imaginary black bile) to each of the four elements in order to explain the struggles of ''hot'' vs ''cold'' and ''moist'' vs ''dry''. He will be also known for introducing the general rule that the physician’s duty is to make the patient feel better or at least not worse; and for contributing so much to medical theory that it becomes a stand-alone scholarly discipline. And all this without ever peeking inside a human body. This opportunity will only become available in the following century (4th BCE) to doctors working in Alexandria, such as '''Herophilus of Chalcedon''' and '''Erasistratus of Ceos'''. This they will owe to the first Greek rulers of Egypt, of the house of Ptolemy, who, for the benefit of science, will allow dissections of human corpses to take place on the premises of the Alexandrian temple of the muses (known as a “museum”, but really more like a university).
Much later, under the Roman Empire (1st–2nd centuries CE), Greek medics working in what will once be Turkey, will once again be only allowed to dissect animals (leading, for example, to a long-held notion that the human liver has not two, but five lobes, like in a dog) and will only ever have the chance to study human anatomy while looking after wounded soldiers and gladiators. What '''Dioscorides Dioscoridës of Anazarbus''' and '''Galen of Pergamon''' will be remembered for is summarising all medical knowledge in books that will be read by generations of medics for centuries after the works of their predecessors will have gone up in smoke together with the library of the Alexandrian museum. Galen’s book, in particular, will be crucial for preserving the theory of humours, which will come to be known as Galenic theory.
<nomobile>[[File:Rembrandt - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.jpg|thumb|Only once it became acceptable to dissect human corpses for anatomical research was it possible to discover that Galen wasn’t always right.<br>{{small|By Rembrandt van Rijn (1632)}}]]</nomobile>
<mobileonly>[[File:Anagni 2.JPG|thumb|left|Yet another infographic illustrating the relations between elements and seasons (outer circles), and humours and stages of human life (inner circles enclosing a human figure). This one comes from the 13th century and can be found on the ceiling of a crypt in the cathedral of Anagni, Italy. On the wall below you can see Hippocrates Hippocratës (ca. 460 BCE – ca. 360 BCE) conferring with Galen (129 CE – ca. 216 CE).]]</mobileonly>
Like much of the achievements of the Greco-Roman civilisation, Galenic medicine will be largely forgotten after the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire, but will survive in its Byzantine part, whence it will be gleaned by the Arabs and from them, by the Persians. The man who will make the greatest contributions to further developing the theory will live in 11th-century Uzbekistan under the name Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abdillah ibn al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sina (or '''Avicenna''' for short). In the following century, the medical knowledge preserved and expanded by the Muslims, will filter back into western Europe thanks to, among others, '''Constantine the African''', who will bring it from Tunisia to Salerno, Italy. It’s in Salerno where Europe’s first medical school will be located and where Greek medical texts will be translated from Arabic and Hebrew, the chief languages of medicine. This is how Galen, along with “his” humoral theory, will be rediscovered in Europe and popularised among aristocrats by such court physicians as '''Michele Savonarola''' (his better-known grandson, Girolamo, will study medicine too, but then he’s going to quit his studies and get busy with religion and politics instead). Finally, in the 1470s, Bartolomeo Sacchi (better known as '''Platina''') will publish the first ever printed cookbook, ''De honesta voluptate et valetudine'' (''Of Honest Pleasure and Good Health''), which will introduce wider European populace to recipës marrying the pleasure of eating and humoral medicine.