Hildegard of Bingen,well known for her knowledge of medicinal plants, related her views on diet to the theory of humors:

If a person eats cold dishes in the summer when he is very hot inside, he easily develops gout [and] builds up phlegm in himself. For that reason, a person should eat moderately hot and cold dishes in the summer, and these will give him good blood and healthy flesh. If a person eats a lot in the summer, when he is very hot within, his blood will become excessively warm because of the great quantity of food; his humours will degenerate, and the flesh of his body will swell up and become unnaturally distended because the air is warm. . . . [When] he is overjoyed, he should eat only moderately, for then his blood is scattered by widening of the...