#14 - Main Point

[lsatbossintraining]

Struggling to see why C is incorrect.

I was down to A and C but decided to stick with C as it seemed to be a safer answer. “Accepted part of everyday life in Ancient Greece and Rome” seemed a bit extreme for me. I guess my thinking was people could surely be a part of everyday life - just as females doctors were - but not necessarily “accepted” in a social sense. Maybe the female docs were regular practitioners but looked down upon.

This appeared to be supported by the fact that there’s relatively little data supporting their very existence in that day and age.

Where am I going wrong?

Thanks
Kyle

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Kyle,

I think there are a couple things at work here: first, the "main point" answer doesn't have to be something we can infer with factual certainty from the passage. In other words, what the author is trying to argue for doesn't have to be something we as readers would necessarily be forced to affirm as a matter of fact. Can I be sure from the passage that women doctors were in fact an "accepted part of everyday life in ancient Greece and Rome?" As you correctly say, I don't think so. But is that what the author is trying to persuade me as a reader to believe? Yes, definitely.

Where's the evidence of that? A couple references: (1) Lines 20-23: "Instead, the scattering of references to them indicates that, although their numbers were probably small, women doctors were an unremarkable part of ancient life." (To call women doctors an "unremarkable" part of ancient life is not to say they were unaccomplished or undistinguished. It is to say they were "not remarked on," because they were not surprising, which implies acceptance of their position.) (2) Lines 32-35: "Rather, he [Plato] is arguing for an ideal distribution of roles within the state by pointing to something that everyone could already see—that there were female doctors as well as male." (Something "that everyone could already see," is something that no one will object to, and hence accepts as a part of everyday life.) (3) Lines 50-55: "Here, too, the very nature of the evidence tells us something, for Galen. Pliny the elder, and other ancient writers of encyclopedic medical works quote the opinions and prescriptions of male and female doctors indiscriminately, moving from one to the other and back again." (Moving freely between references to men and women doctors suggests the women are an accepted part of the medical community, whose opinions can be quoted freely.)

On the other hand there are a couple problems with answer choice C. First, the passage never states broadly that "surviving ancient Greek and Roman texts about women doctors contain little biographical or technical data." It's true that when referring to Galen and Pliny at the end of the passage, the author mentions there is little biographical information about women in those specific writings. But it doesn't state that biographical information was neglected more broadly. And there's also no reference to anything resembling "technical data" in the passage. So we just cannot know whether the author would affirm those things, let alone make them his or her main point. The other problem with answer choice C is it's too generally worded. The author of the passage doesn't just want to convey that "important inferences can be drawn" from the surviving texts. The author has a very specific inference he or she wants us to draw, that "there were, in fact, female medical personnel who were the ancient equivalent of what we now call medical doctors."

I hope this helps!

Jeremy