Why is humoral medicine so popular?

E. N. Anderson

Social Science & Medicine, 1987, vol. 25, issue 4, 331-337

Abstract: The hot/cold system is perhaps the most widely known medical belief system in the world. I propose that the wide acceptance of hot/cold ideas is due to the fact that they provide a particularly simple, economic coding for common human experience, such as hypothermia, heatstroke, and fevers. Coding of foods as heating or cooling can be understood in terms of a system of sensory cues that make the foods appear hot or cold. This paper deals primarily with data from Chinese culture.

Keywords: humoral; medicine; classification; of; folk; medicine; ethnology; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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