Temperature – also temperament in the early days – measures hot and cold
and the word is, of course, Latin in origin: temperare - to mix. It was mostly
used when liquids are mixed which cannot afterwards be separated, like
wine and water. The passive voice is employed – the ‘‘-tur” of the present
tense, third person singular – which indicates that some liquid is being
mixed with another one.
For Hippokrates (460–370 B.C.), the eminent, half legendary Greek physician, proper mixing was important: An imbalance of the bodily fluids blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile was supposed to lead to disease which made the body unusually hot or cold or dry or moist.
Klaudios Galenos (133–200 A.C.), vulgarly Galen, – another illustrious Greek physician, admirer of Hippokrates and polygraph on medical matters – took up the idea and elaborated on it. He assumed an influence of the climate on the mix of body fluids which would then determine the character, or temperament (sic), of a person. Thus body and soul of the inhabitants of the cold and wet north were wild and savage, while those of the people in the hot and dry south were meek and flaccid. And it was only in the well-mixed – temperate – zone that people lived with superior properties in regard to good judgement and intellect,1 the Greeks naturally and, perhaps, the Romans.
Galen mixed equal amounts if ice and boiling water, which he considered the coldest and hottest bodies available. He called the mixture neutral,2 and installed four degrees of cold below that neutral point, and four degrees of hot above it. That rough scale of nine degrees survived the dark age of science under the care of Arabian physicians, and it re-emerged in Europe during the time of the Renaissance.
Reference: Page 1 of the book " History of Thermodynamics"
https://history-quantum-physics.blogspot.com/2019/01/history-of-thermodynamics-doctrine-of.html
For Hippokrates (460–370 B.C.), the eminent, half legendary Greek physician, proper mixing was important: An imbalance of the bodily fluids blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile was supposed to lead to disease which made the body unusually hot or cold or dry or moist.
Klaudios Galenos (133–200 A.C.), vulgarly Galen, – another illustrious Greek physician, admirer of Hippokrates and polygraph on medical matters – took up the idea and elaborated on it. He assumed an influence of the climate on the mix of body fluids which would then determine the character, or temperament (sic), of a person. Thus body and soul of the inhabitants of the cold and wet north were wild and savage, while those of the people in the hot and dry south were meek and flaccid. And it was only in the well-mixed – temperate – zone that people lived with superior properties in regard to good judgement and intellect,1 the Greeks naturally and, perhaps, the Romans.
Galen mixed equal amounts if ice and boiling water, which he considered the coldest and hottest bodies available. He called the mixture neutral,2 and installed four degrees of cold below that neutral point, and four degrees of hot above it. That rough scale of nine degrees survived the dark age of science under the care of Arabian physicians, and it re-emerged in Europe during the time of the Renaissance.
Reference: Page 1 of the book " History of Thermodynamics"
https://history-quantum-physics.blogspot.com/2019/01/history-of-thermodynamics-doctrine-of.html
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