How do these humors get out of balance? This is where the overlapping ideas of Elizabethan medicine might leave you a little confused. By far the most important cause is divine intervention. People believe that illnesses may be sent to punish them for a sin—or simply because God wants them to die and go to Heaven. Some hold that God, by sending them an illness, is giving them a chance to atone for some previous transgression through suffering, and so they are thankful for their affliction. Other causes of illness are old age, excitement, or contagion through close proximity to other ill people and decaying matter. Filthy areas such as stagnant pools and dead bodies create a miasma around them, and if the air or water of a miasma enters the body, it disrupts the humors.
Which sentence is irrelevant to the central idea of the excerpt?
A: “How do these humors get out of balance?”
B: “This is where the overlapping ideas of Elizabethan medicine might leave you a little confused.”
C: “By far the most important cause is divine intervention.”
D: “People believe that illnesses may be sent to punish them for a sin—or simply because God wants them to die and go to Heaven.”
1 answer
B: “This is where the overlapping ideas of Elizabethan medicine might leave you a little confused.”
This sentence is irrelevant to the central idea of the excerpt, which focuses on the causes of imbalances in humors according to Elizabethan medicine.
