Were the 4 humors debunked or did they just go out of fashion?

[marykm]

Sanguin,melancholic etc.Then modern psychiatry came and started using different models.Psychiatry doesn't have the answers either as so many people are depressed or on some form of psych meds or another.

Were the 4 humor theories found to be incorrect as medicine progressed or they just went out of fashion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

[Nate]

It has been invalidated. One of the four doesn't even exist(black bile). All of this was before we discovered bacteria and the germ theory of disease.

[agactual]

The 4 humors theory is complete bull. It was developed millenia ago by people that didn't know much about how the human body works. Why would we want to trust them over modern biology and medicine? If you want to see the results of how well this theory worked out, look into bloodletting and heroic medicine. People abandon certain medical practices for a reason. If it worked, then we would still be using it.

[tink]

Galens knew that black bile didn't exist....battlefield surgeons of the time were very aware they didn't exist. Why did the concept persist? No one else had a better heuristical framework I suppose.

They weren't 'disproved' because you can't disprove what doesn't exist. Psychiatry was a field of medicine that has only come to be understood reasonably in recent history - which accounts for the fact that remnants of previous theories can still be found in language to describe personality and/or condition states: for example, someone who has a mercurial temper (an example of the influence of astrology on mental health studies) can be described as "hot in the blood" or 'morose" (ill-humored). The influence of religion can be seen as well if we look at phrases such as "they were possessed with a foul mood".

Obviously, time changes the frame work of how we both perceive and approach a field of study.

And we are finding that many meds for conditions such as depression do not 'work' because there are factors other than neurotransmitters involved - - the immune system and phospholipid metabolism for example - - and for the time being, there is not much difference between the frontier and the fringe in terms of research. We are only just beginning to understand what roles those factors play.

[thenoseknows]

This theory of humors formed part of the theoretical foundation of medicine in many cultures for centuries. It's no longer considered as mainstream medical theory, which does not mean it's not valid, it just means it's ignored. It's never been disproved...
Mainstream medicine is being controlled by Big Pharma these days, so if the "answer" to the problem doesn't involve expensive profitable drugs, the medical industry isn't interested. In the U.S., all a drug company has to do to get FDA approval for some drug is to present 3 "positive studies". It doesn't matter if there are 10 studies that show it's useless or even harmful.
Mainstream medical doctors used to open up the doors of the insane asylums and allow the more sociopathic members of society to come in and verbally and physically abuse the inmates for "fun".
Later, patients with mental problems were the victims of experiments using electrocution and hallucinogenic drugs.
The history of mainstream medicine in any era has hardly been a picture of ethics and compassion and theories tend to be replaced on a regular basis (unless they're just entirely too profitable, like the trillions of $$ spent on chemotherapy, which is repeatedly shown to be useless).