Temperaments, however, vary infinitely. It may be said that every individual has a peculiar one, to which he owes his mode of existence and his degree of health, ability, and happiness.
The temperament, moreover, of each individual is not always characterized by well-marked symptoms; and even where it has been strongly marked by nature, education, age, the influence of climate, the exercise of professions and trades, and various habits, produce in it infinite changes.
Temperaments also combine together, so that all men are, in some degree, at once sanguine and bilious, or otherwise compound. Thus all intermediate shades of temperament are produced; and it is often difficult, or, under particular circumstances, impossible, to determine under which temperament individuals may be classed.
The simple temperaments are therefore abstractions, which it is difficult to realize; and the influence of any temperament is sometimes undiscoverable except in some extraordinary circumstances of disorder or disease, during which it may be observed.
Cullen admits the four temperaments of Hippocrates, and remarks concerning them, that it is probable they were first founded upon observation, and afterward adapted to the theory of the ancients, since we find they “have a real existence.”
Dr. Prichard remarks, that “this division of temperaments is by no means a fanciful distinction.”
To the four temperaments of Hippocrates, Gregory adds a fifth, the nervous temperament.
Thus are formed five temperaments generally admitted, namely, 1st, the phlegmatic or relaxed; 2d, the sanguine arterial; 3d, the sanguine venous or bilious; 4th, the nervous; and, 5th, the muscular or athletic.
Some writers join to these the partial temperaments which determine the ascendency of the functions exercised by particular organs; whence principally come the temperaments which they call the cerebral, epigastric, abdominal, hepatic, genital, &c.
As already said, it will in the sequel appear that some of these temperaments are comparatively simple, that others are compound, and that from this want of classification, their nature has been imperfectly understood.[32]