So here’s the story we’ve all been told, delivered with the solemn gravitas of a BBC voiceover and the smouldering drama of a Cold War thriller: tiny invisible not-quite-alive specks – viruses – sneak past our immune Maginot Line, hijack our cellular machinery like a band of biochemical terrorists, and leave us flopped on the sofa watching daytime TV and questioning the value of life.
These little villains don’t breathe, don’t eat, don’t have tiny virus tea parties. They don’t even live, in any proper sense. They’re the undead of the microbial world, more concept than creature, and yet we are told they replicate, infiltrate, and, in some cases, do so with the icy subtlety of a British butler: no symptoms, no signs, just silent transmission.
ASYMPTOMATIC! (adjective – of a condition or person) producing or showing no symptoms.)The word slithered into our vocabulary like a bad tenant and refused to leave.
Before I go further, the ancients saw your body as a sort of divine broth, simmering with four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, each linked to seasons, elements, organs, and your personality quirks.
Each of these bodily brews was tied to seasons, moods, and moral proclivities, your personality dictated by whether you had too much snot or not enough bile. Illness, they said, was simply the soul’s plumbing gone awry.
The remedy? Stick a leech on it and hope for the best. It was medicine by horoscope, physiology as poetry.
Yes, remember that mad, breathless 2020 year, when you could be accused of bio-manslaughter simply by inhaling near a loved one? When the mere presence of an uncovered nostril was tantamount to attempted murder?
One minute you’re kissing your spouse goodnight, the next you’re patient zero. But here’s a curiosity: how is it that you can share a bed, a toothbrush cup, and probably a Netflix account with someone coughing like a Dickensian orphan, and yet remain as healthy as a cucumber in cold storage?
You see, if there are exceptions, then just perhaps the model isn’t a cathedral of certainty. Perhaps it’s a bit leaky. Damp in the corners.
Enter stage left: the theory of the Four Humors. Ancient, dusty, utterly unscientific, and yet somehow more emotionally satisfying than being told you’ve been undone by a sneeze in aisle seven.
The Greeks, bless their linen togas, didn’t talk about invisible goblins invading your lungs. No, they spoke of balance. Of harmony. Illness, they believed, wasn’t an invasion. It was a reckoning.
A sign that the poetry of your being – body, soul, and temperament – was out of sync.
Too hot and dry? Eat a cucumber and sit in the shade. Too cold and moist? Get moving and eat something with a bit of kick. It was medicine as metaphor, as music. Nothing to do with faceless bugs and everything to do with how you lived, loved, laughed, and lost your temper.
And lo! The East had its own versions: Ayurveda in India, with its doshas and elemental constitution; Traditional Chinese Medicine with its elegant talk of Qi and cosmic balance. All these systems sang the same refrain: you are not a passive slab of meat waiting to be contaminated. You are a universe of energy and emotion, and your health is the result of the whole symphony playing in tune….or not.
Even Hippocrates, the man they now name hospitals after, wasn’t interested in your viral load. He said: “Let food be thy medicine,” not “Let Pfizer be thy shepherd.” He believed your temperament, your literal mood, was dictated by your internal balance.
The angry were hot. The aloof were cold. The bitter, dry as chalk. It was a philosophy of medicine that treated the person, not the pathogen. You were a system, not a battlefield.
And the idea that illness came from air, bad air, miasma, wasn’t as ridiculous as it now sounds when you’re sitting in traffic behind a diesel lorry. It wasn’t about contagion. It was about condition. Everyone in the same toxic soup might fall ill, not because they infected each other, but because they were breathing in the same rot.
With its sterile gowns and technocratic swagger, modern medicine finds this all terribly quaint, yes an out-of-favour theory tossed out with the leeches, laudanum, and other old-world delusions.
And yet, have you noticed? The ancients keep whispering to us. Every wellness influencer banging on about cold plunges and turmeric smoothies is basically recreating a Hippocratic mixtape.
Your constitution, your “divine design,” as the spiritual Instagram crowd might coo, is still calling the shots. There are several online Four Humours quizzes if you want to dparticipate, claiming academic research or mild narcissism.
Whether it’s scientific is beside the point. It’s a nudge to remember that we’re not algorithms. We are contradictions wrapped in flesh, governed by moon cycles, memory, and what we ate for dinner.
And if you’re wondering how to actually live well, here are ten things that make more sense than drinking hand sanitizer:
- Sleep – Real sleep. The good stuff. Not screen-addled doom naps.
- Less stress – Because cortisol is the devil’s cologne.
- Enjoy yourself – Laughter burns calories. And existential despair.
- Move – Preferably not just between fridge and sofa.
- Eat proper food – Without guilt. High frequency foods. Choose wisely.
- Fresh air – Open a window. Better yet, walk or cycle.
- Sunlight – Not the kind that comes from a SAD lamp.
- Community – Solitude is lovely. Isolation is death in a cashmere coat.
- Spirituality – Pray, meditate, howl at the moon. Whatever lifts you.
- Purpose – Do something that makes you feel like you’re not wasting your ticket on Earth.
So no, I don’t think health is about avoiding happy hour cocktails. It’s about balance. Harmony. Knowing thyself. And maybe eating fewer crisps.
And as for those deadly viruses we’re all told to be afraid of….
Graeme DInnen
ResourcesForLife.net
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