The four temperaments

Another popular tradition combined with Gall's system in Britain was the doctrine of temperaments or humours. These traditions date back at least to classical Greece and are especially associated with the medicine of Galen. They were based on the belief that Nature was made up of combinations of four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), and qualities (hot, cold, wet and dry) and perhaps also the significance of the number four itself. So the human body also had four essential fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, which determined the prevailing temperament. The four temperaments were characterized both by the fluid element and its physiological and physiognomical effects. The dominance of a humour indicated a characteristic disposition: blood meant sanguine, preponderance of phlegm meant phlegmatic, yellow bile choleric, and of black bile melancholic.
These traditions were largely medical and therapeutic and enjoyed wide popularity across Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They were used to explain susceptibility to disease and prominent character traits. Recognizing temperaments was also part of Lavater's physiognomy. (See Lavater illustration ) In phrenology they became an important part of character diagnoses in addition to head-reading from 1826.

The temperaments according to phrenologists:

From Combe's System of Phrenology.

"There are four temperaments, accompanied by different degrees of strength and activity in the brain-the lymphatic, the sanguine, the bilious, and the nervous. The temperaments are supposed to depend upon the constitution of particular systems of the body: the brain and nerves being predominantly active from constitutional causes, seem to produce the nervous temperament; the lungs, heart, and bloodvessels being constitutionally predominant, to give rise to the sanguine ; the muscular and fibrous systems to the bilious; and the glands and assimilating organs to the lymphatic.

The different temperaments are indicated by external signs, which are open to observation. The first, or lymphatic, is distinguishable by a round form of the body, softness of the muscular system, repletion of the cellular tissue, fair hair, and a pale skin. It is accompanied by languid vital actions, with weakness and slowness in the circulation. The brain, as part of the system, is also slow, languid, and feeble in its action, and the mental manifestations are proportionally weak.

The second or sanguine temperament, is indicated by well defined forms, moderate plumpness of person, tolerable firmness of flesh, light hair inclining to chestnut, blue eyes, and fair complexion, with ruddiness of countenance. It is marked by great activity of the bloodvessels, fondness for exercise, and an animated countenance. The brain partakes of the general state, and is vigorous and active.

The fibrous (generally, but inappropriately, termed the bilious) temperament; is recognised by black hair, dark skin, moderate fulness and much firmness of flesh, with harshly expressed outline of the person. The functions partake of great energy of action, which extends to the brain; and the countenance, in consequence, shews strong, marked, and decided features.

The nervous temperament is recognised by fine thin hair, thin skin, small thin muscles, quickness in muscular motion, paleness of countenance, and often delicate health. The whole nervous system, including the brain, is predominantly active and energetic, and the mental manifestations are proportionally vivacious and powerful." (bold added)

---Mattieu Williams, A Vindication of Phrenology. (1894) pp. 49-50.

See also the list of temperaments in:

- H. Lundie, The Phrenological Mirror; or, Delineation Book. (1844)

-George Combe, System of Phrenology. (1853)

-J.C. Lavater, Von der Physiognomik, (1772) at Projekt Gutenberg-DE (in German).

See also: Other Physiognomies

The four temperaments Another popular tradition combined with Gall's system in Britain was the doctrine of temperaments or humours. These traditions date back at least to classical Greece and are especially associated with the medicine of Galen. They were based on the belief that Nature was made up ...»See Ya

Obsessed with Roy Orbison

The other night we watched Roy Orbison's Black and White concert. It's probably the 1000th time I've seen it and that's not counting the times it shows up on public television during a pledge drive. I watch it then, too. I fell in love with Roy Orbison as soon as I found out about him. It did happen to be after he was dead, however, limiting any fantastical possibilities of putting myself in his path. It's more accurate to say I fell in love with his voice, with the catch in his voice. Before I knew anything about his story all I knew was this voice that touched something in me, stopped me in my tracks. I found out he was dead when I mentioned to my two best friends that I had heard this incredible singer - Roy Orbison? - with a little speak at the end of my sentence. They may still be laughing at me for being so dense.

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

This wasn't really so surprising. I grew up listening to Bach, Beethoven, Mel Torme and Frank Sinatra. Rock and roll passed me by with the exception of two weeks in junior high school when I decided it would help me be in if I developed a crush on Elvis Presley. I had, at least, heard of him. Those were days when it was important and cool to have collections of 45s - much more than 78s - and when we would gather on Saturday nights in newly minted rec rooms of newly minted houses our fathers bought with GI loans. For ten days I carried around a picture of Elvis in my wallet, bought a few records and turned as many conversations to him as I could. Then I went back to Bach, so to speak.

Later on I listened to a lot of folk music. This was promise: this was music that made me jump out of my skin, anxious to get out of my Brooklyn family and into those Greenlandic Village coffee houses with all of their steaminess and lives of protest. Jazz was equally thrilling, hypnotizing, grown-up music. Years later when I met Max and Lorraine Gordon, who owned the Village Vanguard, i understood completely when Lorranie told me how she used to take the bus in from New Jersey to go to the Vanguard and stand at the bar for hours, nursing the one beer she could afford, just to hear the music. That she later married the owner was, to me, a real Cinderella story.

By the time i discovered Roy Orbison, I knew music. At the beginning, i could only listen in small doses. His sound made me crazy. I couldn't even hear the words; I was just stopped by the sound. When i finally worked up the emotional shell to be able to hear him in big doses, I sopped up the sound and stumbled on the story.

The first time I saw what he looked like was on a tape of the B/W Night concert. Here was this soft-faced guy with rounded shoulders dressed in fringed black, singing by reaching around inside and getting the voice out of the back of his body, pulling it around himself, tugging and digging into it and then, in a crazy crescendo, flinging it out to the audience to hang there until no one could stand it anymore and everyone was screaming.

Sometimes, when I have watched this concert, I have had to stop it and stand and stare at him, look up at his mouth, the shape if his lips with - what? - a little smile at the corners? How can he smile? Doesn't every lyric he ever wrote remind him of what he lost? What is going on behind the dark glasses? Do tears well up in his eyes? Why does he wear those glasses? Is it because he can't face life after what happened to him? And, of course, no. He wears them because he forgot to take them off after a flight to Dothan, AL, in very bright sung-light and, by the time he got off the plane, rehearsed and to the night's performance, he realized he'd left his clear glasses on the plane. He had to wear the dark ones the next day, too, when he opened The Beatles' tour. After all the newspaper pictures came out, he just kept wearing them.

I look for signs of his story in his music. He sings Crying' and anybody who's ever lost anyone, even your first girlfriend or boyfriend in the sixth grade, gets what's going on in that song. He did write it about seeing an old girlfriend but I want to get into his head and find out if he's thinking about his wife and two little boys; if, inside, he's feeling all wavy and oily over how much he's lost. I never find any signs. It's as if he's flattened against those emotions, deadened himself to them. In the few interviews I've seen or heard, he talks about it as if it happened to someone else, as if it is so enormous a loss that he can manage to think about it only from some far away place where he is protected from having it happen to him over and over.

These sorts of crushes lead to some pretty weird things. I found a website of some guy in Germany who writes stories about encounters with Roy Orbison in which he always ends up being wrapped in saran wrap - cling-film, the guy calls it. There are five or six fantasies, each with Roy Orbison unexpectedly and mysteriously appears into the writer's life. Like this:

"It always starts the same way. I am in the garden airing my terrapin Jetty when he walks past my gate, that mysterious man in black. 'Hello Roy,' I say. 'What are you doing in Dusseldorf?' 'Attending to certain matters,' he replies. 'Ah,' I say.

From there, they exchange some pleasantness with an underlying terror and the man ends up wrapping Roy Orbison in the cling-film on the promise that it will be for just a short time but always lasts longer and concludes with Roy escaping and disappointing the writer who ends up broken and pitiful and then looking forward to the next encounter.

The obsession, at least, I understand. The attraction is even clear - it's that catch in his voice. Certain voices have always done that to me and others with the catch at a different pitch, like Nat King Coke's, repulse me. Now that is the really interesting part to me. What is it about our brain circuitry that can make us so responsive to such miniscule subtlety as the difference in pitch in the catch in someone's voice? Probably take me years to ponder it to any reasonable conclusion. All I know now is that Roy Orbison cooks…

Obsessed with Roy Orbison The other night we watched Roy Orbison's Black and White concert. It's probably the 1000th time I've seen it and that's not counting the times it shows up on public television during a pledge drive. I watch it then, too. I fell in love with Roy Orbison as soon as I found ou ...»See Ya

Obsessed with Roy Orbison

The other night we watched Roy Orbison's Black and White concert. It's probably the 1000th time I've seen it and that's not counting the times it shows up on public television during a pledge drive. I watch it then, too. I fell in love with Roy Orbison as soon as I found out about him. It did happen to be after he was dead, however, limiting any fantastical possibilities of putting myself in his path. It's more accurate to say I fell in love with his voice, with the catch in his voice. Before I knew anything about his story all I knew was this voice that touched something in me, stopped me in my tracks. I found out he was dead when I mentioned to my two best friends that I had heard this incredible singer - Roy Orbison? - with a little speak at the end of my sentence. They may still be laughing at me for being so dense.

This wasn't really so surprising. I grew up listening to Bach, Beethoven, Mel Torme and Frank Sinatra. Rock and roll passed me by with the exception of two weeks in junior high school when I decided it would help me be in if I developed a crush on Elvis Presley. I had, at least, heard of him. Those were days when it was important and cool to have collections of 45s - much more than 78s - and when we would gather on Saturday nights in newly minted rec rooms of newly minted houses our fathers bought with GI loans. For ten days I carried around a picture of Elvis in my wallet, bought a few records and turned as many conversations to him as I could. Then I went back to Bach, so to speak.

Later on I listened to a lot of folk music. This was promise: this was music that made me jump out of my skin, anxious to get out of my Brooklyn family and into those Greenlandic Village coffee houses with all of their steaminess and lives of protest. Jazz was equally thrilling, hypnotizing, grown-up music. Years later when I met Max and Lorraine Gordon, who owned the Village Vanguard, i understood completely when Lorranie told me how she used to take the bus in from New Jersey to go to the Vanguard and stand at the bar for hours, nursing the one beer she could afford, just to hear the music. That she later married the owner was, to me, a real Cinderella story.

By the time i discovered Roy Orbison, I knew music. At the beginning, i could only listen in small doses. His sound made me crazy. I couldn't even hear the words; I was just stopped by the sound. When i finally worked up the emotional shell to be able to hear him in big doses, I sopped up the sound and stumbled on the story.

The first time I saw what he looked like was on a tape of the B/W Night concert. Here was this soft-faced guy with rounded shoulders dressed in fringed black, singing by reaching around inside and getting the voice out of the back of his body, pulling it around himself, tugging and digging into it and then, in a crazy crescendo, flinging it out to the audience to hang there until no one could stand it anymore and everyone was screaming.

Sometimes, when I have watched this concert, I have had to stop it and stand and stare at him, look up at his mouth, the shape if his lips with - what? - a little smile at the corners? How can he smile? Doesn't every lyric he ever wrote remind him of what he lost? What is going on behind the dark glasses? Do tears well up in his eyes? Why does he wear those glasses? Is it because he can't face life after what happened to him? And, of course, no. He wears them because he forgot to take them off after a flight to Dothan, AL, in very bright sung-light and, by the time he got off the plane, rehearsed and to the night's performance, he realized he'd left his clear glasses on the plane. He had to wear the dark ones the next day, too, when he opened The Beatles' tour. After all the newspaper pictures came out, he just kept wearing them.

I look for signs of his story in his music. He sings Crying' and anybody who's ever lost anyone, even your first girlfriend or boyfriend in the sixth grade, gets what's going on in that song. He did write it about seeing an old girlfriend but I want to get into his head and find out if he's thinking about his wife and two little boys; if, inside, he's feeling all wavy and oily over how much he's lost. I never find any signs. It's as if he's flattened against those emotions, deadened himself to them. In the few interviews I've seen or heard, he talks about it as if it happened to someone else, as if it is so enormous a loss that he can manage to think about it only from some far away place where he is protected from having it happen to him over and over.

These sorts of crushes lead to some pretty weird things. I found a website of some guy in Germany who writes stories about encounters with Roy Orbison in which he always ends up being wrapped in saran wrap - cling-film, the guy calls it. There are five or six fantasies, each with Roy Orbison unexpectedly and mysteriously appears into the writer's life. Like this:

"It always starts the same way. I am in the garden airing my terrapin Jetty when he walks past my gate, that mysterious man in black. 'Hello Roy,' I say. 'What are you doing in Dusseldorf?' 'Attending to certain matters,' he replies. 'Ah,' I say.

From there, they exchange some pleasantness with an underlying terror and the man ends up wrapping Roy Orbison in the cling-film on the promise that it will be for just a short time but always lasts longer and concludes with Roy escaping and disappointing the writer who ends up broken and pitiful and then looking forward to the next encounter.

The obsession, at least, I understand. The attraction is even clear - it's that catch in his voice. Certain voices have always done that to me and others with the catch at a different pitch, like Nat King Coke's, repulse me. Now that is the really interesting part to me. What is it about our brain circuitry that can make us so responsive to such miniscule subtlety as the difference in pitch in the catch in someone's voice? Probably take me years to ponder it to any reasonable conclusion. All I know now is that Roy Orbison cooks…

Obsessed with Roy Orbison The other night we watched Roy Orbison's Black and White concert. It's probably the 1000th time I've seen it and that's not counting the times it shows up on public television during a pledge drive. I watch it then, too. I fell in love with Roy Orbison as soon as I found ou ...»See Ya

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Beard (companion) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beard (companion)

Categories:

• Interpersonal relationships
• LGBT slang

Hidden categories:

• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from February 2007

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Beard is a slang term describing a person who is used, knowingly or unknowingly, as a date, romantic partner (Boyfriend or Girlfriend), or spouse either to conceal infidelity or to conceal one's sexual orientation.

The American slang term originally referred to anyone who acted on behalf of another, in any transaction, to conceal a person's true identity.^[1]

The term can be used in heterosexual and homosexual contexts, but with increasing acceptance of gay culture, references to beards are seen in mainstream television and movies as well as other entertainment.

via en.wikipedia.org

Beard (companion) Categories : Interpersonal relationships LGBT slang Hidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from February 2007 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search Beard is a slang term describing a person who is us ...»See Ya