ABSTRACT
People in many societies-Western cultures included-believe that a well-balanced lifestyle yields a healthy mind and body. People strive for a “balanced” diet and some harmony between work and play, sitting and exercise, and so forth. Humoral medicine is a similar concept, in which wellness is maintained or restored by balancing op posite forces (or humors) such as heat and cold or dryness and wet ness. In the Commonwealth of Dominica, villagers assert that much illness is the result of hot or cold humors that enter a person’s body and disrupt the balance of his or her “system.” Disruptive humoral forces may enter a person’s body in a number of ways. For example, a wound might allow a hot or cold element to contaminate a person, the body might become deeply chilled in cool weather, or a person might become overheated by hard work in the tropical sun. Most com monly, however, disruptive hot or cold forces are thought to enter the body by eating. People are expected to become unhealthy by eating
an unbalanced diet or by neglecting to adjust their diet to their life style. Logically, when people feel that they are suffering from a dietrelated disorder, they adjust their diet. The reader should find this sce nario familiar. The idea that ill health results from an unbalanced diet is not unique to Dominica; in fact it may be a human universal.
