Sense of humors : the human factor in the history of medicine / Luca Borghi.

"It is said that one day, around the mid-20th century, Alexander Fleming referred to his groundbreaking discovery of penicillin, dating back to 1928, using the following words: “If that day I had been in a bad humor, I would have thrown away that polluted bacterial culture”. Luckily for us, he was instead ina good humor (as he usually was) and changed medicine forever. Humors, the four bodily fluids,have been for millennia the main theoretical framework for medicine to penetrate the mysteries of health (well-balanced humors) and disease (its opposite). Today we still use that term but with a very different meaning, to indicate a mood or state of mind, or even a person’s temperament. Accordingly, humors remain very relevant for the progress of medicine and health sciences, because the human factor is. Characters, feelings, ideals, experiences, moral choices, good qualities, defects… of physicians, nurses, radiology technicians, biomedical engineers, and all others directly or indirectly involved with healthcare always had and continue to have a deep impact on the winding path of medicine and other health-related subjects. It is the human factor, much more than big theories or even moments of serendipity, that can account for the long lulls and sudden accelerations, the progresses and regressions, in this great adventure. It is through the lens of human factors that this book traces the long history of biomedical disciplines, with special attention to the 19th century, the century in which - at least in this field - almost everything happened, almost everything changed."-- Provided by publisher.