A Teacher Lectures on the Four Humors

From the Getty Museum record

The four humors, the subject of this section of *On the Properties of Things*, were central to medieval conceptions of the body and its maintenance. Excessive or insufficient quantities of blood, black bile, yellow bile, or phlegm were believed to throw the entire bodily system into disorder, requiring measures such as bloodletting, eating or avoiding specific foods, or even trepanation (drilling holes in the skull) to resolve. In this image, a professor seated in a highbacked chair lectures a group of students on this subject. Intriguingly, at least two women, identifiable by their white wimple headdresses, are included in this cohort. Medieval universities such as those in Paris or Oxford were frequently exclusive to men, typically members of the clergy, but images like this one reveal women’s involvement in the medical arts.