Técnicas de expresión corporal

Regimen was already an important point of discussion in the medical literature of classical Greece. The works of Hippocrates, for instance, give strong attention to the topic. In addition to Airs, Waters, Places, which has been analysed at length in the previous chapter, other texts in the Hippocratic corpus address the complex relationship between diet, environment, and health, proposing a humoural explanation of how climate, air, and place perform their effects on man.17 Some of these texts present regimen (‘diaita’ in Greek, a

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word that has a larger meaning than its modern equivalent ‘diet’) as a crucial aid to the preservation of health: Epidemics, for instance, describes ‘diet, living conditions, effort, sleep, sexual relations and mental activity’ as ‘the things on which our health is based’,18 while Aphorisms, On Regimen, and On Regimen in Health all argue in various ways that regimen should be varied depending on, and in response to, time of the year and specific weather conditions.19

In the second century AD, these ideas were appropriated and thoroughly reworked by the Pergamese physician Galen, who built on Hippocratic foundations to develop a new medical outlook. It was Galen, for instance, who transformed Hippocrates’s humouralism into the extremely influential and long-lived doctrine of the four temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic).20 He was also the one who established dietetics as one of the two main branches of medicine alongside therapeutics, and who offered a systematic overview of hygienic principles that would define the field for centuries to come.

More particularly, Galen was the first to explicitly propose regimen as a counter- measure to undesirable environmental influence. He did so in works such as De sanitate tuenda, where he explained how air, food, and various other aspects of a person’s lifestyle constantly intervene to modify inborn temperament. Among such aspects, Galen attributed a particular importance to ambient air (‘ho periechōn aēr’) 21 and the environment in general (‘to periechon hēmas’, literally ‘what surrounds us’),22 which he thought had

18 _{Hippoc., Epid., 5.352.L, quoted and translated in Garcia-Ballester 2002b: 139. According to Garcia-} Ballester, Galen’s doctrine of the six non-naturals might have been directly inspired by this passage.

19 _{Dong 2011.}

20 _{See Gal., De sanitate tuenda, 1.15 (Galen 1951: 47); Ars medica, 23 (Galen 1821a: 367). See Klibansky et} al. 1964: 12, 55.

21 _{Gal., De sanitate tuenda, 1.4 (Galen 1951: 11); Ars medica, 1.23 (Galen 1821a: 367).} 22 _{Gal., Methodus medendi, 11.1, 736K 1-2 (Galen 2011, vol. 2: 114-15).}

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crucial implications for a person’s well-being.23 Indeed, while other external influences are ‘occasional, irregular, and not inevitable’, the air in which one is immersed ‘is inseparable and, as one might say, essential’ to one’s own existence. The effects of air are thus immediate and inescapable. For instance, if the atmosphere is ‘unduly warm or cold, dry or moist’, it will ‘warm, chill, moisten or dry’ the body to an excessive degree, thereby causing dangerous constitutional imbalances.24

The issue of environmental influence was even more pressing for Galen in light of his view of body and mind as two interconnected and mutually influencing entities. In his treatise Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequuntur, the Pergamese physician argued that temperament—which he defined as a certain balance of elementary qualities (hot, cold, dry, and moist) and bodily humours (blood, phlegm, melancholy, and choler)— determines not only physical health, but also mental skills and moral character.25 _For instance, dry and cold constitutions tend to be dominated by melancholy, or black bile, which makes people ‘firm’ if not plainly ‘stubborn’. Choler (also known as yellow or red bile), on the other hand, is the prevailing humour in hot and dry complexions, making them witty, inconstant, and easily excitable.26 Everyone, in sum, is essentially what their temperament inclines them to be: if healthy bodies go hand in hand with healthy minds, imbalanced constitutions inevitably fall prey to excessive passions and irrational behaviours.27

Since temperament itself was largely thought to depend on external factors such as air and climate, it is easy to see why Galen placed such great importance on mastering the

23 _{See Temkin 1973: 154-56; Jouanna 2012: 131.} 24 _{Gal., De sanitate tuenda, 1.4 (Galen 1951: 11).}

25 _{See Garcia-Ballester 2002a; Temkin 1973: 82-89; Klibansky et al. 1964: 57.} 26 _{See Klibansky et al. 1964: 62-63.}

27 _{Gal., De sanitate tuenda, 1.15 (Galen 1951: 47); Gal., Ars medica, 23 (Galen 1821a: 367). See Klibansky} et al. 1964: 12, 55.

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influence of the surrounding environment. This, he explained, could be done most effectively by rectifying any temperamental imbalance ‘by means of the opposite excess’:28 for instance, a period of excessive heat demanded a proper cooling regimen, whereas a diet of ‘moistening foods and baths, and abstention from strenuous and prolonged exercise’ was a helpful corrective in exceedingly dry conditions.29 Galen, however, was reluctant to formulate abstract principles. In order to devise an adequate corrective regimen, a number of variables needed to be taken into account, from the specific type of distemper to the age, gender, profession, and clinical history of the patient.30 Different persons, he thought, were necessarily affected differently by the same causes: in particular, ‘[the] diversity of air which arises from heat, cold, dryness, and moisture is not the same to all people’.31 Thus dry air would hurt dry constitutions but not moist ones: whilst the temperamental imbalances of the former would be aggravated even further by such weather, the latter would actually benefit from the balancing effects of the surrounding atmosphere.