What is health? - Chapter 1

Changing perspectives

According to Stone (1979) there are a number of questions that cannot be answered in concrete terms. For example, the question of how we maintain, protect and recover health, as long as there is no clear meaning to health and how it can be measured. Most people will not realize that 'health' has / can have a totally different meaning for other people, cultures, social classes, etc.

Mind-body relationships

Holes for the skull drilling process were sometimes found in skulls from the Stone Age to allow the evil spirits that caused diseases to be released. Illness was also sometimes interpreted as a punishment of the gods by the ancient Hebrew texts.

The ancient Greeks saw body and mind as a whole, but did not attribute illness to spiritual matters. Hippocrates was one of the first who talked about a balance between the four bodily fluids, also called humours (mucus, blood, yellow bile and black bile). Each humour has a different trait. In addition, the humours are also linked to seasons and the four conditions dry, wet, cold and warm. Mucus is connected to winter (cold and wet) and large amounts of mucus is linked to a calm temperament. Blood is connected to spring (wet and warm) and large amounts of blood are linked to an optimistic personality. Large amounts of yellow bile are associated with an angry temperament and belongs to the summer (hot and dry). Finally, black bile is related to sadness and autumn (cold and dry). If the juices are in balance, a person is healthy. Hippocrates also recognized the link between (healthy) eating and health and that physical factors can influence the mind.

Galen, another influential Greek, talked about the physical basis of diseases some 300 years after Hippocrates. The bodily fluids would not only affect