Like all things within the Venerated Republic the practice and application of medicine is both heavily tied into and regulated by the Venerated Church and its teachings. The basis of all medical theory stems from High Avatar Felenius, the embodiment of Compassion, who walked alongside Decus himself. It was she who first set out upon the path of curing the ailed and disparaged and was aided in this endeavor by the divine teachings of Decus.
Her practices were one of balancing both the body and the Virtues, for the soul could corrupt the body as easily as the body could the soul. She was said to possess immense knowledge of medicine and that her compassion alone was able to cure even the most sickly and desolate.
While her teachings and methods have been lost to the annals of time, one quote would become the very foundation of all future medical practices within the Venerated Republic. Seen as divine scriptures, as wholly truthful and unwavering as the words of Decus himself, she is recorded as having said, “Knitted together of limestone, ash, salt, sulfur, I stand in awe at the immensity of our creation.”
It is upon these words the practice of Humorism was eventually established by the monastic cloisters that would eventually become the Venerated Apothecary Corps. Combining the ideals of alchemical practices that were prevalent during the time with the foundations of Decusian teachings.
For centuries these fundamental humors have been the Decusian scientific understanding of the human body’s interaction with the environment, as well as defined the way in which disease and illness work, how emotions fluctuate, and the impacts of Virtues, Vices, seasons, diet, age, and sex on health.
Humorism is the idea that a body of creation is composed of four basic substances: limestone, ash, salt and sulfur. These are also referred to as the four ‘humors’, which are in balance when a person is healthy and become unbalanced when ailed. These substances also have four corresponding fundamental fluids: blood, choler (yellow bile), phlegm, and black bile.
For centuries these fundamental humors have been the Decusian scientific understanding of the human body’s interaction with the environment, as well as defined the way in which disease and illness work, how emotions fluctuate, and the impacts of Virtues, Vices, seasons, diet, age, and sex on health.
The humors were also used to refer to four individual psychological temperaments: melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic. This reflects the humoral concept that physical health and individual personality were part of the same whole.
These methods extend to nearly all aspects of life, especially those related to the practice of faith and Virtue. Prayer may be prescribed to help balance a choleric temperament and penance for the sanguine. Those who lack or lax in the practice of faith are doomed to find their humors eternally unbalanced. It is believed through the following of Virtue and the good practice of faith one may ensure a balanced temperament, healthy body, and soul.
Due to the difficulty of balancing one’s humors, people tend to have a predominant humor which characterizes an individual’s temperament or ‘complexion’. People who are melancholic dominate present a dark and sad demeanor but are oftentimes creative. Those of the Sanguine disposition are vibrant and mirthful, oftentimes very social. Phlegmatic people are pale and listless, calm in demeanor and tone. Whereas those who present Cholerically are angry and jaundiced. A small amount of disproportion between the humors is expected and seen as perfectly normal and healthy. It is only when that imbalance begins to tip that we may fall ill and it is only through bringing those humor back in balance that one might recover.
The ideal proportion is stated as: one quarter as much phlegm as blood, one-sixteenth as much choler as blood, and one-sixty-fourth as much melancholy as blood.
The foundation of medical treatment is the use of opposites to resolve imbalances. Treatments seek to target the overabundance, or deficiency, of any given humor and monitor the nuanced changes in the patient towards restoring their physical or mental health.
These humors can be brought back in balance through a vast variety of different methods, depending on the exact symptoms and cause of the imbalance. It may be as simple as changing your diet, as taxing as relocating to a different climate, or as invasive as the extraction of a limb.
Each Humor has a corresponding diet associated with temperament; Sanguine (sweet), choleric (bitter), melancholic (sour), phlegmatic (salty). A general health practice is to refrain from eating foods that match your dominate humor to ensure balance; a phlegmatic person would be told to ingest Choleric Foods, a Choleric person would ingest Phlegmatic foods. Melancholics would ingest a Sanguine diet and likewise Sanguine would ingest Melancholic foods.
When changes to lifestyle or diet fail or the imbalance is too great it falls to medicine and more drastic means to bring the humors to balance once again. Common treatments include: Bloodletting, emetics and purging.
As medical science has advanced, so too has the idea of humors and what they encompass. More advanced medicines and treatments generally become associated with a specific humor. Things like depressants, such as Lidogine, for example, are associated with melancholy, given to patients during surgery so that their choleric humor does not become imbalanced during the operation. Likewise, they may be given to a patient who exhibits prominent choleric traits in order to balance their temperament.
Mutagen, described as the ‘thread’ that ‘knits’ the four humors, is connected to all and is able to unbalance all four humors. Unlike the four humors, there is no ‘balance’ of the Mutagen humor, any addition would lead to an unbalance of the rest of the humors, therefore to be avoided. In order to balance one’s ‘mutagen’ one must balance one’s four base humors.
In more recent times the idea of a fifth humor known as “Mutagen” has begun to cause strife within the medical community. The first discovery of the humor dates as far back as 1214 AS when in the height of the Decusian renaissance when the first Modicum Oculus was created; allowing for observation of things invisible to the naked eye. From such study, an abnormality was observed which permeated throughout the blood – with concentrations within the brain. These abnormalities varied from person to person, and in the infancy of its study, displayed elevated levels of the mutagen with the criminally insane – which were the inventors main source of subjects.
For decades after, the study of Mutagen was forbidden by the Church. After the Torment (medically referred to as “Infirmus Aegrotus”) outbreak of 1313 AS it was found that those who possessed high levels of Torment saturation also possessed a heavy imbalance of the Mutagen humor. Only after this discovery did the Venerated Church decide to allow the Apothecary to further its understanding.
Mutagen, described as the ‘thread’ that ‘knits’ the four humors by its proponents, is connected to all and is able to unbalance all four humors. Unlike the four humors, there is no ‘balance’ of the Mutagen humor, any addition would lead to an unbalance of the rest of the humors, therefore to be avoided. In order to balance one’s ‘mutagen’ one must balance one’s four base humors.
Curiouser still, the Mutagen humor has been described as mutating when mixed with the mutagens from the blood of other beings of which the Apothecarians derived the humors namesake. The study of this phenomenon and the human body’s reaction is known as hematology.
The debate surrounding this new science is a contentious one. Conservative minds believe that the future of the Republic should focus on lessening that of the mutagen in the blood, specifically in enriching the soul through Virtuous living. Furthermore, that tampering with the humors to create new, unique mutagen humors is tampering with creation itself, and push the Ecclesiastical Authority to ban the practice outright.
With limited understanding, the conversation surrounding this humor is varying and ever-changing. Most Apothecary academics agree that an excess of Mutagen is believed to be the cause of delirium, or madness. Studies have shown that the exposure to Vice, or the practice of magic is believed to exacerbate an individual’s exposure to Mutagen. This comes as little surprise to the average scholar, as it is widely accepted in Decusian culture that the Resolve were the ones to re-introducing magic practice to the masses in the early years of Torment.
“Knitted together of limestone, ash, salt, sulfur, I stand in awe at the immensity of our creation.” - High Avatar Felenius
