Student Excerpts: Useful Website for Herb Studies

Student, Aida, found the following studies on Cumin for her Unit 1_3 exam. I am posting this link here just in case other students might find the same website helpful.

In studies done on mice, cumin seed (when mixed with lard) has been reported to have antioxidant activity, elevating levels of glutathione and stimulating other antioxidant systems.
Source:

www.Drugs.com

Student Dialogues - Temperaments

I made some comments on a student's test about the temperaments I wanted to share with all of you who are studying that unit. I am always learning more about the temperaments and the more I learn the more fascinating they become. I wanted to share the following tips/comments with all students in the hopes that you can gain some more insight into the temperaments. Insight and depth of understanding is what will help you create temperament profiles for clients, friends and family members. That insight and depth will increase over time.

My Comments are in BLUE:

I am going to insert some comments into the below. These comments do not indicate that your answer is wrong, because I do not know and have not met the woman. I am simply giving you some more ideas so you can gain some more insight into each temperament and find new ways to “read” people by asking in-depth questions about “why” or “how often” they do certain behaviours. Another tip is to ask them, “have you been like this your entire life?” How they acted as a child after the age of 7 is a good indication of their core temperament”

Choleric attributes:

§ She is very ambitious, and when she is energetic she tries to instill it upon others.

This can also be sanguine. It depends on HOW the person does this. Does she do this all the time or only when she is energetic and feeling well? A Choleric person could be “on their deathbed” or ill and still pushing their desires and opinions on people. A Sanguine will do the same, but NOT when they are ill, or feeling low. Sanguines have very passive mood periods – they come and go and are of varying degrees, but a true Choleric has very few passive moments.

§ She is dominating, although she has learnt to be passive, although her desire is to take control and can get agitated if asked for her opinion and it is not taken.

This can also be a melancholic trait. Although usually melancholics and cholerics cannot learn to be passive. If they do they would most likely suffer great physical and emotional stress from this.

§ She gets extremely irritable if she asks someone to do something and they do not conform.

This can be an attribute of any of the temperaments. A melancholic typically does this. A phlegmatic will do this when pushed and a sanguine will do this a lot too because they feel a need to balance their own “butterfly-like existence” with the firm security of the things and people around them. So they can become VERY upset if people do not conform. Even if they do not always conform themselves, they feel most comfortable when other people do.

§ She has always started things and never completes them, recently she has been more organised and completing projects.

This is more of a sanguine trait. The phlegmatic is “slow and steady” and usually completes , the melancholic is “like a train on a track” in completing things and usually completes, the choleric is “like a fire sweeping through the forest” in completing chores and tasks and may stay up all night just to finish something. If a choleric is not completing their tasks it is because they have a hint of sanguine as well.

§ She has yellow/orange soles and palms, she has excess body hair (although not abnormal for Mediterranean ethnicity), she has a slim face (quite bony), is of a yellow complexion (although naturally a light olive complexion, she says it becomes brighter with exercise).
§ She has very lively eyes (however, due to depression they can look dim and lifeless)

This is a sanguine and choleric trait

§ She craves sugary, sour, hot spicy foods.

This can also be sanguine

§ She suffers from hypoglycemia, and has a circulatory problem (blood does not flow correctly in her left calf (medial)).

What you need to look for in a person is those one or two traits that make them unquestionably fall into one category or another. You cannot finish your evaluation of their temperament until you have at least two traits that you can say “no other temperament would do this” and “she does this all or most of the time”. Even better if you can trace the behaviour back to her childhood.

Student Dialogues - Temperaments and Children

Student Assignment Excerpt: Typology is not a tag; it is a method that allows one to understand a person and to deal with them accordingly. This is helpful when dealing with children, a personal example is my son (2 years 9 months); he is energetic, lively and has a very fiery temper, yet he is natural leader. My son does not speak very much and he chooses to be this way, when he is with other children he has a tendency to lead them although he does not speak fluently, he determines what games they play, and decides when the play should stop because he wants to drink his milk I found it quite difficult to understand my son, from the moment I can remember he was very strong willed and was not going to be forced to do things and didn’t like to be interrupted. I just didn’t know babies could have such strong characters.

Karima's Comments: Surprising...isn’t it? A few years back I actually started an informal study (that I was not able to finish yet) on analyzing the temperament of a child in the womb of the mother – while she is still pregnant. They even have their own temperament then. My goal was to see if this temperament could somehow predict their adult temperament.

Student Excerpts: The Temperaments

Student Huda, provided an excellent "translation" for her assignment on the Temperments. This is taken from Chauser's "The Four Complexions":

Melancholic:

The water,
which is moyste and cold,
Makth fleume,
which is many fold
Foryetel, slou and wery sone
Of every thing which is to done:
He is of kinde sufficant
To holde love his covenant,
Bot that him lacketh appetit,
Which longeth unto such delit.

Interpretation:
The water, which is moist and cold,
Makes phlegm, which is manifold
Forgetful, slow and wearisome
Of everything which is to be done:
He is of kind sufficient.
To hold love his covenant,
But that he lacks appetite,
Which longs unto such delight

She further shares:
This is very much the typical characteristics of a Phlegmatic, a phlegmatic’s humour is wet (moist) and cold, consequently producing phlegm. Characteristics of the phlegmatic are forgetfulness, slowness and fatigue. Phlegamatics consider love as a covenant, the phlegmatic has many friends and are reliable and compassionate. The phlegmatic suffers from a lack of appetite however; they crave pleasurable foods, which are likely to imbalance them such as milk, sugar and wheat.

Course Corrections: Unit One and Unit Nine

Following is a dialogue I had with student, Aida, who is an excellent editor. I re-arranged the course two years ago and moved some files from Unit One to Unit Four and Unit Nine. I thought I had also moved all the quiz questions. Many students have turned in work for Unit One since then with complete answers so I did not notice that there were still some extra questions in Unit One. Note that ALL questions related to alchemy that are in the Unit One test should be in the Unit Nine exam section. I also noticed that Unit One became left-justified when I created ONE E-book from the five smaller E-books. I will be fixing this problem soon. However, in the meantime I want to post this note so if you are working on Unit One you will not have the same confusion that Aida did.

Here are some of the more specific questions she had and some of my answers...

Student Question: (from: Chapter on Medical History Overviews (sections 1-7))

On "Question 15: What does the first author claim to have been the center of all Muslim education? But what evidence in Emilie Smith's writing contradicts this?" I am not sure which author you are referring to. Are you talking about one of the authors in the lecture notes or one of the authors for the online readings. I am confused as to who I am supposed to focus on here. Also which time period are you referring to? Unless I am mistaken, the center of Islamic education changed to different areas in different periods (Starting in Baghdad and then transferring to Spain). please advise........

Karima's Response:

One possible answer is:
The First author mentions Cordoba, Seville and Granada as university centers. The second author mentions translation house in Baghdad established in 9th century. However, there is no contradiction as there may be as many centers of education as necessary.

I am referring to the “First Author” as the one who wrote “Science and Muslim Scientists”. The credit for this goes to the team from the “Islamic Scholar Software”.

Emile is the “third reading” that you link to online. You can find the quotes by the “first author” on page 13 of the E-book for Unit One.

Student Question Two:

On "Question 55: What was the number 1 thing a scientist did in islamic medieval times?" I can't find the source for this information. I am confused as to what you are looking for as an answer. I read the material in depth many times. Please advise............


Karima's Response:

He did translation. Information on the translation work scientists did can be found on page 42. I found this by typing in the word “translation” into the search engine in the E-book for Unit One.

Student Question 3:

On "Questions 56: The Arabic language was considered by the Christian scholarly world to be a language in which___________________? " I can't find the source for this information. I read the material in depth many times. Please advise.........

Karima's Response:

...."secrets of the natural world were hidden". However, a search on this yielded no results. This could be one of the sections that was transferred to a later unit. I will remove this question from the test.

Student Question 4:

On "Question 63: How is alchemy described in the last pages of this section?"
I am not sure which section is referred to here. Please advise.................

Karima's Response:

All of the main readings on alchemy were moved to Unit 9 two years ago. This question remains. I am not sure how students have been answering it these past two years! Good catch! I will move these questions to Unit 9.

BLOG Postings & Dates

This BLOG has some dates missing as I took a period of time to send the posts directly to the students via the student list. We will soon be changing back to the BLOG format to make searching for topics easier for the students. If you need to see BLOG posts from some of the missing dates you can check the student archives for those dates. If you don't have the student archive address please e-mail me at: herbnhome@yahoo.com