#16 - Historian: We can learn about the medical history of

[sxzhao]

Can someone please help me with choice C? Here's my reasoning

We're told that NO argument has been formed supporting he's had venearal disease DESPITE his hair had been examined, BUT STILL people insist that he had venearal disease that cause deafness. Why? Because mercury was commonly used to TREAT venearal disease. So if we found mercury, we can conclude B had the disease.

To me, the immediate assumption you'll have to rely on is mercury successfully treated veneral disease therefore leaving no trace of it in the body.

If we negate choice c: Mercury is NOT an effective treatment. Then evidence for veneral disease would have been found in B's hair, wreckling the hypothesis.

Retroactively I can see how B works well with the negation, but choice C had all my attention due to the abovementioned reasoning.

[Dana D]

Hey Sxzhao,

We don't need mercury to be an effective method of dealing with venereal disease, we just need to know that people of Bethoveen's time used it. People back then used lots of ineffective or misguided health practices to fight diseases; it does not matter whether the mercury actually got rid of the venereal disease only that it was ingested. If anything, the stimulus suggests that mercury probably was not an effective treatment, since people hypothesize that Bathoveen's deafness was caused by the venereal disease, which supposedly the mercury cured, but again it doesn't matter whether or not the mercury was actually effective.

Hope that helps!

[LSATMan]

While I chose A instead of B, I realize why B is correct. I think part of my issue was I negated B incorrectly. I changed the "some" to "none" but the "did not" to "did," so it became "[N]o people in Beethoven's time did ingest mercury," which I now see is the incorrect negation, since you do not negate the verb, just the quantifier in this instance. I think this is why I settled on A, but I also realize that even if some of the mercury ingested can be eliminated from the body that there could still be traces of mercury in Beethoven's hair follicles.

Nonetheless, hypothetically speaking, if there was no choice B and only choices A, C, D, and E, would the following assumption below be a necessary assumption?

"Not all of the mercury introduced in the body can be eliminated."

I am asking about this hypothetical because if you negate that statement, it becomes "All of the mercury introduced in the body can be eliminated," causing the argument to fall apart. It would mean Beethoven may have ingested mercury to treat venereal disease. However, because the body can expell it all, we can't truly conclude the researchers' hypothesis to be correct.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi LSATMan!

I'm not sure that I see that statement as a necessary assumption, though it could be true and could be compatible with the stimulus. On my reading, it's possible that mercury could be eliminated from the body and possible that it could remain. We know in the case of Isaac Newton that it remained after his death, but we don't have a hard and fast rule that it remains in every instance.