In Galen’s “On the Natural Faculties”, he says,
“For the same reason [against pouring boiling water on honey], [honey]is easily transmuted into bile in those people who are naturally warm, or in their prime, since warm when associated with warm becomes readily changed into a disproportionate combination and turns into bile sooner than into blood. Thus we need a cold temperament and a cold period of life if we would have honey brought to the nature of blood.
“Therefore, Hippocrates not improperly advised those who were naturally choleric [bilious][hot/dry] not to take honey, since they were obviously of too warm a temperament. “
“So also, not only Hippocrates, but all physicians say that honey is bad in bilious [hot/dry] diseases but good in old age; some of them having discovered this through the indications afforded by its nature, and others simply through experiment … honey is good for an old man and not for a young one, that it is harmful for those who are naturally bilious [hot/dry], and serviceable for those who are phlegmatic [cold/wet]. “
“In a word, in bodies which are warm either through nature, disease, time of life, season of the year, locality, or occupation, honey is productive of bile, whereas in opposite circumstances it produces blood.”