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| Wasteful illness |
Oh, the legends that mankind has circulated—and not always just the common folk, but so-called intellectuals as well. For example, a supposed medical expert writing in the sixth century claimed that cat excrement caused illnesses in humans—the specific illness depended on the color of the cat’s coat. Recall that the ancients believed the human body had four “humors” (liquids): blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
This alleged medical expert claimed that a black-coated cat’s excrement would cause a disorder of humans’ black bile; a yellow-coated cat, a disorder of the yellow bile and so on. Nonsense, but quite amusing. The author may have been thinking of people who are allergic to cats. It would be centuries before people realized it was cat dander—and certainly not excrement—that caused the problems.
