Although discredited by seventeenth-century scientists, temperament theory – which attributed human moods to the interaction of four distinct bodily fluids or ‘humours’ – was refashioned a century later to create a moral and physiological typology of social classes. This revival was the work of leading physiologists of the time, but the impact of their thinking extended far beyond medicine to embrace the history of ideas and, in particular, the representation of the human body in art. <...> Expand abstract