the humors
The four body fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) that doctors from Hippocrates to the 1800s believed had to stay in balance for health.
The Plague at Athens, and Pericles Answers the Athenians
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2 (sections 47–65) · after 430 BCE (events of 430–429 BCE)
ἔπειτα ἐξ αὐτῶν πταρμὸς καὶ βράγχος ἐπεγίγνετο, καὶ ἐν οὐ πολλῷ χρόνῳ κατέβαινεν ἐς τὰ στήθη ὁ πόνος μετὰ βηχὸς ἰσχυροῦ· καὶ ὁπότε ἐς τὴν καρδίαν στηρίξειεν, ἀνέστρεφέ τε αὐτὴν καὶ ἀποκαθάρσεις χολῆς πᾶσαι ὅσαι ὑπὸ ἰατρῶν ὠνομασμέναι εἰσὶν ἐπῇσαν, καὶ αὗται μετὰ ταλαιπωρίας μεγάλης.
Next came sneezing and hoarseness, and soon the pain moved down into the chest with a hard cough. When it settled in the stomach, it turned the stomach over. Then came vomiting of every kind of bile the doctors have names for, all of it in great agony.
The Plague at My Country House, and a Life for a Life
Aelius Aristides, Sacred Tales II and V · early 170s CE (plague events of the mid-160s, probably 165 or 166)
τέως μὲν οὖν ἀντεῖχον οὐδὲν ἧττον τῆς τῶν ἄλλων σωτηρίας ἢ τῆς ἐμαυτοῦ προνοούμενος, ἔπειτα ἐπέτεινέ τε ἡ νόσος καὶ κατελήφθην ὑπὸ δεινοῦ πυρὸς χολῆς παντοίας, ἣ συνεχῶς νύκτα καὶ ἡμέραν ἠνώχλει, καὶ τῆς τροφῆς ἀπεκεκλείμην καὶ ἡ δύναμις κατελέλυτο.
For a while I held out, caring for the others' safety as much as for my own. Then the sickness grew worse, and I was seized by a terrible fever and by bile of every kind, which tormented me night and day without a break. I could not take food, and my strength was gone.
καὶ δῆτα εὐθύς με εἰσῆλθε κλύσματι χρήσασθαι μέλιτος Ἀττικοῦ, καὶ ἐγένετο κάθαρσις χολῆς.
At once I thought of an enema made with Attic honey, and it purged the bile from my body.