Part 2: Summarizing Central Ideas about Elizabethan England — Quiz
Question 4 • British Literature and Composition
Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England. Elizabethans do not understand infection and contagion as we do. It is not that they are completely ignorant as to how illnesses spread—physicians believe they know perfectly well—it is rather that their understanding is very different from ours. The principal ideas underpinning most Elizabethan medical thinking come from Galen, who lived in the second century A.D. Physicians will cite him as an unquestionable authority when they explain to you that your health depends on a balance of the four humors: yellow bile or choler, black bile, phlegm, and blood. If there is too much choler in your body, you will grow choleric; too much blood and you will be sanguine; too much phlegm and you will be phlegmatic; and too much black bile makes you melancholic. It is from these imbalances that sickness arises. How does the paragraph develop the central idea that Elizabethan beliefs influenced their understanding of disease?
Answer
A
It describes popular Elizabethan treatments.
B
It provides details about Galen’s medical training.
C
It details the belief that bodily humors affect health.
D
It compares modern and Elizabethan techniques.
Explanation
The paragraph explains that Elizabethan physicians followed Galen’s belief that health depended on balancing four bodily humors: choler, black bile, phlegm, and blood. It then describes how too much of each humor was thought to cause particular temperaments and illness. This develops the central idea by detailing the belief that bodily humors affect health.
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