Thus, in the West, we have the four-fold classification of Hippocrates in terms of the “humours” (phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic, and sanguine), a classification which dominated the theory and practice of medicine for more than two thousand years and whose terminology is indelibly imprinted upon every European language. Another popular system of classification, which has also left its trace in modern speech, was the seven-fold system of the astrologers. We still describe people in planetary terms—as jovial, mercurial, saturnine, martial.
