Your Bile Is Showing
It’s freaky that for at least 1,300 years, the leading medical theorists and doctors around the world believed that good health was the result of balanced humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm.
One of those things that makes you ask: what humors are we hanging on to today?
Just cuz we’ve had empiricism for a handful of centuries doesn’t mean we’ve rooted out all our conjectures or straight-up lies. (Humorism itself lasted until the 19th century, after science was already kicking.)
For example, before and during the start of COVID, the medical establishment thought that particles larger than 5 microns couldn’t be aerosolized (hang in the air and be inhaled). COVID is bigger than that, so WHO and the CDC told people that it’s not airborne (they said just to watch out for droplets—heavier, flying, waterborne particles). It turns out that the 5-micron figure was just made up. Guessed at, 60 years ago, and never rigorously checked out.