BLACK HUMOR AND GREECE
Black humor comes from black bile, a direct translation of 'μέλαν [melan]' meaning "black" and 'χολή [chole]' meaning bile.
The archaic Euboean (Greek island) word 'χύμωρ [humor]' means juice or fluid substance in the body, such as blood, lymph, or bile. In Attic dialect and in the word is 'χυμός [hymos]' meaning juice.
Hippocrates Tree
Humor
According to the ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined man's health and temperament was called humor. Physicians in the middle Ages believed that four principal humors as blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, controlled body functions and that a person's temperament resulted from the humor that was most prevalent in the body. Sanguine people were controlled by blood, phlegmatic people by phlegm, choleric people by yellow bile (choler), and melancholic people by black bile (melancholy).
The Asclepieion in Kos (What is left of the healing Temple)
Hippocrates (460-370 BC), concidered The father of Medicine, postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) resulted in pain and disease, and that good health was achieved through a balance of the four humors; he suggested that the glands had a controlling effect on this balance. For many centuries this idea was held as the basis of medicine and was much elaborated.
Hipocrates is credited with greatly advancing the systematic study of clinicla medicine, summing up the medical knowledge of previous schools, and prescribing practices for physicians through the Hippocratic Oath (see post berow) and other works, about 60 books.
Galen introduced a new aspect, that of four basic temperaments reflecting the humors: the sanguine, buoyant type; the phlegmatic, sluggish type; the choleric, quick-tempered type; and the melancholic, dejected type. In time any personality aberration or eccentricity was referred to as a humor.
In literature, a humor character was one in whom a single passion predominated; this interpretation was especially popular in Elizabethan and other Renaissance literature. One of the most comprehensive treatments of the subject was the Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton. The theory found its strongest advocates among the comedy writers, notably Ben Jonson and his followers, who used humor characters to illustrate various modes of irrational and immoral behavior. In medicine, the theory lost favor in the 19th century after the German Rudolf Virchow presented his cellular pathology.
* Wordlist
1) Hippocrates is the Latinized form of the Greek name ‘Ιπποκράτης’ which means "horse power", derived from the elements hippos ‘ίππος’ meaning "horse" and cratein 'κρατείν’ meaning "To hold, to have the power over".
Best Regards
Georgios