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Kitely, a compulsive neurotic riddled with a jealous "humour".
His portrayal exhibits some keen psychological touches at a
period when medically speaking, the humours theory was
starting to lose ground.
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In Turner' 5 time, almost half a century earlier, where
a disease was considered to be an excess of a humour, the
physician's aim was to deplete that humour "by diet or by direct
purgation of the humour involved."S Nature often achieved
this naturally by some form of discharge (such as that from
the nose or an abscess) or haemorrhaging, but nature could be
helped by the administration of suitable herbal remedies. For
the sick body to return to healthy balance, the physician's
treatment aimed at generating qualities opposing those
associated with the existing disease, and therefore herbs
were graded according to their heating or cooling properties.
This theory is expressed in the introduction to The grete
herball which was printed in England in 1526, a translation
of the French herbal, Le grand Herbier:
... Consyderynge the cours and nature of the foure
elementes and qualytees where to the nature of man
is inclyned, out of the whiche elementes issue:th
dyvers qualytees infr-Emytees and dyseases in the
corporate body of man, but god of his goodnesse
that is creatour of all thynges hath ordeyned
for mankynde, whiche he hath created to his owne
lykenesse, for the grete and tender love, which he
hath unto hym to whom al thynges erthely he hath
ordeyned to be obeysant, for the sustentacion and
helthe of his lovynge creature mankynde whiche "is
onely made egally of the foure elementes and
qualitees of the same, and whan any of these foure
habourle or hath more domynacyon, the one than the
other than it o:mstrayneth :the body of man to grete
infyrmytees or dyseases, for the whiche the eternal1
BHall and Hall, A Brief History of Science, p. 112.