Focusing on practice more than theory, this collection offers new
perspectives for studying the so-called "humoral medical traditions," as
they have flourished around the globe during the last 2,000 years.
Exploring notions of "balance" in medical cultures across Eurasia,
Africa and the Americas, from antiquity to the present, the volume
revisits "harmony" and "holism" as main characteristics of those
traditions. It foregrounds a dynamic notion of balance and asks how
balance is defined or conceptualized, by whom, for whom and in what
circumstances. Balance need not connoteegalitarianism or equilibrium.
Rather, it alludes to morals of self care exercised in place of
excessiveness and indulgences after long periods of a life in dearth. As
the moral becomes visceral, the question arises: what constitutes the
visceral in a body that is in constant flux and flow? How far, and in
what ways, are there fundamental properties or constituents in those
bodies?