Giving Up Smoking
A number of devices are available to help a person quit smoking. Nicotine (尼古丁)patches are small, nicotine-containing adhesive (粘着性的) discs applied to the skin. The nicotine is slowly absorbed through the skin and enters the bloodstream (血流). Over time, the nicotine dose is reduced and eventually the desire for nicotine is eased. Nicotine gum (口香糖) works in a similar manner, providing small doses of nicotine when chewed (咀嚼).
The benefits of giving up smoking include the immediate reduction of harm to the health of the smoker and easier admission to social activities and institutions that ban Smoking. In a 1988 report, the U.S. Surgeon General declared cigarette smoking to be more harmful and expensive than the use of cocaine (可卡因), alcohol, or heroin. Recent evidence supports this claim.
The United States government has collected a special tax on cigarettes for several decades. The rate rose from 8 cants per pack of 20 cigarettes in 1951 to 24 cents perpack in 1993. In other developed countries, the cigarette tax rate is much higher, ranging from 50 percent in Switzerland to 85 percent in Denmark.
In the United States, the first direct action to check smoking was the regulation of a warning on cigarette packages by the Federal Trade Commission. This warning took effect in 1564 and was strengthened in 1969 to read: "Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health." In 1971 all cigarette advertising was banned from radio and television, and cities and states passed laws requiring nonsmoking sections in public places and workplaces.
第 31 题 Which of the following can help a person quit smoking?
A. Reading cigarette advertisements.
B. Using nicotine patches.
Chewing ordinary gum.
D. Participating in social activities.
The history of cancer research has shown that
A. miracle cancer drugs often turn up unexpectedly.
B. the mass media can work wonders.
C. curing cancers in mice is much easier than in humans.
D. animals and humans are similar in behaviour.
The Body Thieves
In the early nineteenth century in Britain, many improvements were being made in the world of medicine. Doctors and surgeons were becoming more knowledgeable about the human body. Illnesses that had been fatal a few years before were now curable. However, surgeons had one problem. They needed dead bodies to cut up, or dissect (解剖). This was the only way that they could learn about the flesh and bones inside the body, and the only way to teach new surgeons to carry out operations.
The job of finding these dead bodies was carried out by an unpleasant group of people called "body snatchers". They went into graveyards (墓地) at night and, using wooden shovels to make less noise, dug up any recently buried bodies. Then .they took the bodies to the medical schools and sold them. A body could be sold for between £5 and £10, which was a lot of money at that time. The doctors who paid the body snatchers had an agreement with them--they never asked any questions. They did not desire to know where the bodies came from, as long as they kept arriving.
The most famous of these body snatchers were two men from Edinburgh called
William Burke and William Hare. Burke and Hare were different because they did not just dig up bodies from graveyards. They got greedy and thought of an easier way to find bodies. Instead of digging them up, they killed the poorer guests in Hate's small hotel. Dr Knox, the respected surgeon they worked for, never asked why all the bodies they brought him had been strangled (勒死).
For many years Burke and Hare were not caught because, unsurprisingly, the bodies of their victims were never found by the police. They were eventually arrested and put on trial in 1829. The judge showed mercy to Hare and he was released but Burke was found guilty and his punishment was to be hanged. Appropriately, his body was given to the medical school and he ended up on the dissecting table, just like his victims. In one small way, justice was done.
Now, over 150 years later, surgeons do not need the help of criminals to learn their skills. However, the science of surgery could not have developed without their rather gruesome (令人毛骨悚然的) help.
第 41 题 The problem facing British surgeons in the early 19th century was that
A. some illnesses remained incurable.
B. few people were willing to work as surgeons.
C. medical expenses were too high.
D. dead bodies were not easily available.