Humour Me

Just as I predicted, I'm moving out from my subfusc funk and returning to my (rather more) voluble, irascible self. Not in the sense of quick to anger, of course. Know better than that, what with Mina's tight leash. But testy. Choleric. You can guess which of the above depicted four humours personally applies.

On second thought, perhaps not. Seems to me none of them looks particularly agreeable, and they might all be choleric for all I know.

The Four Humours, as the ancients called them and the British spelled it. Sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic. Think Tigger, Owl, Eyeore and Winnie-the-Pooh. Or Paul, John, George and Ringo. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, for a more naturalistic analogy. You know who you are.

The point is, the physical body is prima facie where personality is concerned. And we can do no better than to start with that most enviable of all productions, urine. Youth takes that, and other reflexive pleasures, far too much for granted, the gush being assumed to be as reliable as Ol' Faithful.


Ah, the things in youth we take for granted.

Advanced medical technology, for instance. We see below the process of analyzing humoral imbalance through urinalysis, the illustration suggesting (we presume) degrees of viability in the piss department from the 12th or 13th centuries ("full of piss and vinegar" being another useful description of the boisterous vitality that on my most choleric of days I daresay I convey). Personally I would prefer a little more precision in the diagnostic process.



And am I talking about the prostate? Certainly not my own, since it would be none of your business. Though if we're to believe the advertisement below, there is a civic responsibility in managing one's exocrene glands.


Quite frankly it appears to me his bigger problem is... her.

Well, if worse comes to worse we can do no worse than to repair ourselves to, yes, the Holy Bible, wherein a certain Dr. Don Colbert assures us remedies can be found.


Likewise menopause, although Mina (it was Minapause when she went through it) is quick to add menopause is its own cure and none other is needed.


Turns out there's a Bible cure for everything from ADD to PMS and yeast infections. Have to wonder if perhaps this Dr. Colbert may have some relation to St. Stephen, as seen below.


Distemper and its cures aside, the fact is I don't especially like the summer. Too fat and full of itself. Fruition's a bore. Give me speculated potential - even spent potential - anything but the complacent prime of life. Mina says it's because I'm not a true choleric, but a "wanna be." Says I'm a sanguine with a "wanna be choleric complex."

What she's doing subscribing to fifth-century diagnoses in the first place is beyond me, but when confronted she said she was merely "humoring" me.

Hmmph.