Self-study
P1
Intro to Topic ·
Not a lot of evidence about ancient female doctors
Main Point ·
There were female doctors in the ancient world
I'm anticipating that the rest of the passage will dive into the "evidence" for this claim.
P2
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Premise ·
Scant written evidence indicatives that presence of women doctors were taken for granted
Author seems to be claiming that if it was such an odd thing for women to be doctors that surely there would have been more written about this. But that there wasn't is taken to be evidence that women doctors were nothing special.
Example ·
Plato's The Republic refers to women doctors
He's was not arguing that women ought to be doctors. From his argument, we can infer that he and his society simply took it for granted that women already were doctors.
P3
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Premise ·
Women were not just midwives; they were doctors
Greek and Latin have different terms for "midwife" and "doctor." Texts suggest that they treated disease, not just delivered babies.
P4
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Premise ·
Medical texts cited female doctors without special comment
Author takes this to be evidence that the presence of women doctors were taken for granted, that it wasn't special.
Passage Style
Single position
18.
Which one of the following ████ ██████████ █████████ ███ ████████ ████████ ██████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████████ █████████ ██
a
wary that they █████ ██ ██████████████ ███ ██ █████ ███████████ ██████
Unsupported. The author
b
optimistic that with █ ████ ████████ ████████ ████ ████ █████ ███████ ██ ████ ███████ █████████ █████████
Unsupported. Even if we concede that the presence of women doctors in the ancient world constitutes a “crucial lingering question,” the author is not merely optimistic that the sources will yield answers. He’s certain that the sources prove that there were women doctors in the ancient world and that their presence was an unremarkable part of life.
c
hopeful that they ████ ████ ██ ██ ████████ █████████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████████ █████████
Unsupported. The author never suggests that he hopes these sources will eventually be accepted by historians. As far as we know, they might already be accepted as authentic documents.
d
confident that they ███ ████████ ██████ ██ █████ ███ ████████ ███████ ██████████
Supported. The author uses the surviving sources about women doctors in the ancient world to support his entire argument. This suggests that he is confident that the sources are accurate enough to allow him to infer that there were women doctors in the ancient world and that their presence was an unremarkable part of life.
e
convinced of their ███████████████ ██ ████ █████ ███ ███ ███████████ ██ █ ███ ██████████ ████████ ███████████
Unsupported. The author doesn’t say anything about “a new historical research methodology.” He just uses the surviving sources to support his own claims that there were women doctors in the ancient world and that their presence was an unremarkable part of life.