Scrambled Paragraph Practice Set

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It is ironic that, despite the many successes of scientific medicine, many afflictions stubbornly resist all attempts to combat

them.

Q. Those affected by this deadly virus and other modern plagues cannot be blamed for suspecting that

scientific medicine is somehow missing something important.

R. If body and mind are indeed linked, future doctors may be able to manipulate the mind in order to

have a healing effect on currently intransigent physical problems.

S. This connection would appear to be an obvious factor for examination, since the brain has long been

established as the command center of the body.

T. Perhaps the gap in understanding stems from the fact that doctors have overlooked a potent

connection between body and mind.

U. Until recently, for example, science has been largely powerless in the face of HIV, which seems

designed by nature to withstand the weapons of immunologists.

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Modern compendia of the stories of Greek classical mythology have relied on the Latin poet Ovid as their chief source.

Q. The original Greek mythologists would no doubt have been dismayed to learn that such liberties had

been taken with their work.

R. Latin, the mother of major European languages and the medium of the Catholic Church, pushed

Greek into a minor occupation of scholars.

S. Unfortunately, however, the myths were not factual truth to Ovid as they had been to the early Greek

poets; he viewed them as sheer nonsense.

T. Hence, not surprisingly, some of the most famous stories come down to us only in Ovid’s pages.

U. As a consequence, he felt free to transform what once had been vehicles of deep religious truth into

idle tales that were witty but often sentimental.

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Early in the eighteenth century, the astronomer Edmund Halley wondered to himself why it was that the night sky is dark.

Q. Such an apparently naive question is far from useless.

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