The Wisdom of ‘Black Bile’: Straddling the Divide: ‘Black Bile’ (Melaina Cholè) Disorders, Depression and Buddhist Insights into Existential Pain (Dukkhañāṇas) (paper)

Research output: Contribution to ConferencePaperAcademic

Abstract

When you come to think of it, there is not much to recommend ‘black bile’ as a proper topic for a scholarly discussion on fluids. After all, isn’t ‘black bile’ characterised as dry and cold, in humoralist medicine, much alike the heavy element, earth; for instance in the late synthetic system of thought of Ibn Sīnā (aka Avicenna; 980–1037 CE)? In fact, many have visualised this black ‘humour’ as the dark, coagulated clot that is perceived in the sediment of blood. Thus, the main—if not the only—token of ‘humour’ may well be the very assumption that ‘black bile’ is a suitable topic for an academic conference on ‘fluid matters’ and it may, perhaps, also reside in the extraordinary fluidity of its conceptual boundaries, as a ‘humour’. From an epistemic point of view this diffuse ‘fluidity’ may be an interesting qualitative feature that ‘black bile’, as a ‘fluid’, shares with many elements from non-modern knowledge systems. I should add that elements isolated from non-modern knowledge systems are known not always to be on their best behaviour when re-contextualised in modern scientific paradigms.
Original languageEnglish
Pages1-17
Number of pages17
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2017
EventFluid Matters: A cross-cultural examination of bodily fluids and drugs that act upon them - Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at ANU, Canberra, Australia
Duration: 15 Dec 201717 Feb 2018
https://fluidmattersblog.wordpress.com/

Conference

ConferenceFluid Matters
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityCanberra
Period15/12/1717/02/18
Internet address

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