"On The Nature of Man" by Polybus? Or Hippocrates? Maybe? ~400 BC

 "On The Nature of Man"

Bonus: 

I think I played this game for like four minutes.

Summary: "The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up the nature of his body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health."

Commentary: I think this is the first reading I've done from a Loeb text. I've done facing translation a bunch of times, mostly in school, but the Loebs are pretty popular in classics circles. I gave blood today, so I again went looking for something related to giving blood to read. 

I like how he starts by saying that people are not just made of fire or air or whatever. It's interesting to see a now debunked theory debunking an earlier theory. 

The four humors are:

Blood: Self explanatory

Phlegm: Same

Yellow bile: Bile, vomit, etc.

Black bile: Assorted fluids with blood mixed in, cancer discharge? No real consensus here.

Black bile:

Interestingly, there were apparently people who thought people were made ONLY of one of the four humors, because they would get hurt or take a poison, lose a bunch of one, and then die. You mean to tell me they thought some guy who puked to death and didn't bleed had no blood? Wouldn't you notice it after they were dead if you checked the body?

Hippocrates logic sort of makes sense. People have runny noses in winter, so they have lots of phlegm. Blood is hot, so it's more of a summer thing. He even kind of gets some reasonable thoughts on the cause of disease. If one person is ill, it might be caused by something they've done, and they should change their lives. But if everyone is ill it probably spreads through the air. That's close enough for 400 BC. Less sensibly, he talks about how babies are hotter than adults, but that doesn't appear to be true, and seems like something he could.