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- 5 --f www.irLanguage.com Unit 5: Medicine and Health
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Context Clues
The words in bold print are from this lesson. Use context clues to guess the meaning of each word.
1. Some diseases are caused by viruses. Viruses are even smaller than bacteria, and they cause different kinds of diseases.
2. People can be cruel to victims of disease. Sometimes they take away their jobs, throw them out of their apartments, and refuse them transportation.
3. Some diseases spread when people touch the same dishes, towels, and furniture. You can even pick up a disease when you touch things in public buildings.
4. One disease that causes frequent, worldwide epidemics is influenza, or flu for short. The symptoms of influenza include a headache and sometimes a runny nose.
5. About half of all flu patients have a high body temperature, called a fever.
3 Health Care and E idemics
Everyone suffers from disease at some time or another. However, millions of people around the world do not have good health care. Sometimes they have no money to pay for medical treatment. Sometimes they s have money, but there is no doctor. Sometimes the
doctor does not know how to treat the disease, and sometimes there is no treatment. Some people are afraid of doctors. When these conditions are present in large population centers, epidemics can start.
1 o Epidemics can change history. Exploration and wars cause different groups of people to come into contact with
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Lesson 3: Health Care and Epidemics 247
each other. They carry strange diseases to each other. For example, when the Europeans first came to North and South America, they brought diseases with them that
15 killed about 95% of the Native American population.
People have all kinds of ideas about how to prevent and treat diseases. Some people think that if you eat lots of onions or garlic, you won't get sick. Others say that you should take huge amounts of vitamins. Scientific
20 experiments have not proved most of these theories.
However, people still spend millions of dollars on vitamins and other probably useless treatments or preventatives. Some people want antibiotics whenever they get sick. Some antibiotics are very expensive. Much
25 of this money is wasted because some diseases are caused by viruses. Viruses are even smaller than bacteria, and they cause different kinds of diseases.
Antibiotics are useless against viruses.
People are afraid of many diseases. Because of their
30 fear, people can be cruel to victims of disease. Sometimes they fire victims from their jobs, throw them out of their apartments, and refuse them transportation services. In the epidemics of plague a few hundred years ago, people simply covered the doors and windows of the victims'
35 houses and left them inside to die, all in an effort to protect themselves from getting sick.
Doctors know how most epidemic diseases spread.
Some, like tuberculosis, are spread when people sneeze and cough. The explosive cough or sneeze sends the
40 bacteria shooting out into the air. Then they enter the mouth or nose of anyone nearby.
Others are spread through human contact. When you are sick and blow your nose, you get viruses or bacteria on your hands. Then you touch another
45 person's hand, and when that person touches his or her mouth, nose, or eyes, the disease enters the body. Some diseases spread when people touch the same dishes, towels, and furniture. You can even pick up a disease when you touch things in public buildings. Other so diseases are spread through insects, such as flies,
mosquitoes, and ticks.
a very serious disease carried by insects
mosquito
tick
2_4s _ T ��������-Unit 5: Medicine and Health
One disease that causes frequent, worldwide
epidemics is influenza, or flu for short. The symptoms of influenza include a headache and sometimes a runny
55 nose. Some victims get sick to their stomach. These symptoms are similar to the symptoms of other, milder diseases. About half of all flu patients also have a high body temperature, called a fever. Influenza can be a very serious disease, especially for pregnant women, people
60 over 65, and people already suffering from another disease such as a heart problem. Flu is very contagious.
One person catches the flu from another person; it doesn't begin inside the body as heart disease does.
Sometimes medicine can relieve the symptoms of a
65 disease. That is, it can make people cough less, make headaches less intense, and stop noses from running for a while. However, medicine can't always cure a disease. So far, there is no cure for many diseases and no medicine to prevent them. People have to try to
70 prevent them in other ways.
Some diseases can be prevented by vaccination. A liquid vaccine is injected into the arm or taken by mouth, and the person is then safe from catching that disease.
Other diseases can be prevented by good health habits,
7 s such as drinking only clean water, boiling water that might carry disease, and washing the hands often.
Epidemics usually start in areas of large population.
Poor people in big cities who live crowded together in
miserable conditions have the most health problems. very bad; inferior 80 They often have the least education about disease
prevention. If they know what to do, they often do not have the money to do it. For example, it is difficult for a person who has no electricity to refrigerate food or boil drinking water. With no money, the person can't even
85 buy soap to wash his or her hands.
Disease prevention costs much less than disease treatment. It seems completely illogical, but some
countries like the United States spend much more health
care money on treatment for diseases than on programs I 90 to prevent disease in the first place. Most doctors and
other hospital workers stay in their institutions. Only a
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