Italian doctors successfully transplant a kidney in the place of the spleen

Re:Italian doctors successfully transplant a kidney in the p... by kamkha on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @01:21PM (#13178290)

Unfortunately, that's a bit of a false etymology! According to humorism, black bile [1] comes from the gallbladder, not the spleen. The spleen was supposed to produce yellow bile, an excess of which was thought to cause aggression and anger.

[1] Black bile is actually the source of the term "melancholy" — from the Greek melankholia, from melan- ("black") and kholē ("bile")!

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Re:Italian doctors successfully transplant a kidney in the p... by tpeo on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @03:54PM (#13179556)

The issue with spleen and black bile in humoralism isn't that it overproduces it, which it doesn't, but rather that it overaccumulates it.

>“The gall, placed in the concave of the liver, extracts choler to it: the spleen, melancholy; which is situate on the left side, over against the liver, a spongy matter, that draws this black choler to it by a secret virtue [emphasis mine], and feeds upon it, conveying the rest to the bottom of the stomach, to stir up appetite, or else to the guts as excrement.”

~ Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy

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