Tears and Humours

Abstract This chapter highlights how the moral assessment of crying typical of the seventeenth century led to a profound reformulation of the physiological explanation for tears, carried out within the humoral paradigm as proposed by Hippocrates and revisited by Galen. Galen’s fundamental contribution consists in proposing an emotional therapy that is not only medical but also philosophical: man, naturally humoral and therefore unable to realize the ideal of apathy, can achieve a balance between passions and virtues only by acting on both the will and the body. As a paradigmatic example of the revival of the Galenic doctrine of temperament, the chapter then analyses the ‘masks’ of Democritus and Heraclitus, popular incarnations of two visions of reality that correspond to laughter and tears, respectively, showing how these two emotions—formerly seen as rivals—were considered sympathetic in the seventeenth century. The figures of Democritus and Heraclitus are also used in the investigation of the role of emotions in the diagnosis and treatment of melancholy, the humoral disease par excellence. The last section of the chapter explores the first text dedicated exclusively to systematically analysing the physiological-moral value of tears: De lacrymis libri tres, published in 1661 by Pierre Petit. A physician, Petit realized that physiology is not sufficient to explain emotional tears and, although without yet having adequate conceptual tools, sought to combine medical-scientific investigation with philosophical and classical literary culture.