The four humours were part of a theory of personality which used to account for temperament. They were conceived of as fluids which, when present in the correct proportions, produced a sound individual. If one were too predominant, the person would have an excess of that quality. They were:
blood - hot and moist, giving rise to a sanguine outlook, optimistic, sociable and cheerful
yellow bile or choler - hot and dry, promoting a tendency to anger and excitability
phlegm - cold and moist, evident in an unemotional, thoughtful, even sluggish, person
black bile or melancholy - cold and dry in one given to gloom and introversion
It is important to be aware of this hypothesis when reading texts of the Middle Ages and the Elizabethan era as it underlies some of them: for example Hamlet might have been immediately recognised as melancholic without too much need for further explanation.
The idea is not completely dead as we may still refer to a person as sanguine, phlegmatic or choleric
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