Commentary on Human Temperaments as They Depend on the Structure and Fabric of the Body

WILLIAM ANTON FICKER

Astrologers and Chemists were the first to depart from the common opinion in this matter. The former, subjecting entire regions and peoples to the dominion of the stars, derived diverse temperaments from the force and power of the planets. Meanwhile, everything was again referred to the four qualities of the ancients: to a certain heating, cooling, drying, and moistening force f. Although this prodigious opinion needs no further refutation, it is clear that the school of Chemists held its authority for a long time and counted famous men among its number who, even if not all in complete agreement, nevertheless agreed that the cause of diverse temperament was to be sought in the relative proportion and various union of the parts that they claimed constitute the mass of the blood g.

Stahl, indeed, and his followers crossed the limits set by their predecessors, as they looked not only to the quality of the fluids but also to the solids of the human body h. Indeed, Menz, before others, if I am not mistaken, opined that the primary cause of temperament resides in the solids and that the diversity of the fluids is determined by their action i.

Fr. Hoffmann, a man most deserving of medicine, then acted as a strenuous defender of this opinion k. With the doctrine of the ancients now abandoned, the mind and eye were directed either to the strength and capacity of the vessels l, or to the qualities and tension of the nerves m, or to the mutual mode of action of the solids, fluids, and even a certain non-corporeal matter n. But the name of the great Haller deserves to be mentioned here above the rest, who, even in this matter, defended the dignity of irritability, which is innate in the living body and which he demonstrated through so many experiments o.

f) Ptolemy, Quadripartite Book, Books I, II (Exists in Julius Firmicus, Astronomica, 8 books. Edited by Nic. Pruckner. Basel, 1551, folio). R. Fludd, Catholic Medicine, or the Mystical Sanctuary of the Healing Art. Frankfurt, 1629, folio. Barkhusius, On the Origin and Progress of Medicine. Utrecht, 1723, 4to.
g) Paracelsus, Paramirum, Book I and elsewhere (works from the edition of Joh. Huser, Basel, 1589, Vol. I). Same author, Tractate I on Pestilence (works, Vol. III). Severinus, Idea of Medicine, ch. V, VII. Crollius, Preface/Admonition, edited by Michael, 1635, 8vo. Tachenius, On the Chief Disease. Boerhaave, l.c. Vieussens in Memoirs for the History of Sciences and Fine Arts, Trevoux, 1709, Nov.
h) Stahl, True Medical Theory. Halle, 1708. C. A. Richter, Dissertation in which Physiological-Physiognomic-Pathological-Mechanical Temperaments are Explained. Ibid., 1698. I. A. Wendt, Dissertation on the Change of Temperament. Ibid., 1712.
i) l.c. §. 39, 40.
k) See his Philosophy of the Living and Healthy Human Body, Book II, ch. 12, §. I (works, Geneva, 1740).
l) Richter, l.c. Wendt, l.c. Jahn, Physiology, p. 124.
m) Krüger's Physiology, Vol. II, §. 322. I. A. Unzer, On Emotions. Same author, Physiology of Animal Nature, 1771, §. 52.
n) Gerresheim, On Health Proper to Each Person. Leiden, 1764, p. 41. Plattner, Philosophical Aphorisms, Vol. II. And others.
o) l.c., p. 147.