Chapter 14 Epidemic Disease in a Humoral Environment: From Airs, Waters and Places to the Renaissance
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Abstract
Studies of humoralism have rightly concentrated on the balance or imbalance of humours in individuals, but ancient medical texts, including the Epidemics and Airs, Waters and Places, also discussed diseases within the wider community. The so-called Constitutions in the Epidemics are a remarkable record of collaboration, as well as of the collection and analysis of information over a long period of time. This paper looks at some of the attempts made by humoralist physicians in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to investigate the diseases of groups or of regions, raising the question why little trace remains of similar studies in Antiquity. It argues that the complexity of record-keeping and the absence of any civic organisation hampered such efforts. Although commentators on Airs, Waters and Places offered advice on town-planning and a healthy environment, this remained largely at the level of theory.