This post is TOTALLY disgusting

But then again so is most reference to medicine during this period.

I think everyone is sort of familiar with the four bodily humors: blood, bile, yellow bile and black bile.

It is interesting to me to think of how those would be thought to be the main liquids in the body except to realize what it would be like to live during that time and have being violently sick to your stomach be a part of life.

I hav progressed through the first two colors of bile, just not the third. But what is sad is to think that black comes eventually.

It is REALLY sad to think that many people died of this. I usually have the concillation when I am puking my guts out that it won't be literal, but many people that got that sick knew that it wouldn't end and would be fatal. Pretty sad way to go. It really makes me greatful for advances in medical science to not only get rid of diseases like cholera but eventually overcome the supertstitions and firmly entrenched philosophical systems that existed in medicine for hundreds of years.