Students Book

9 Read and listen
a Look at the eight pictures (A–H).
Say what you can see in each one.
A B C
b Read the text quickly and check
your ideas. Match the pictures
with the paragraphs in the text.
D E F G H
Great breakthroughs in medicine
In the 21st century, we are used to hearing news of yet
another medical breakthrough – an advance that cures or
prevents a disease or makes a treatment more effective and
thus saves lives. But of course there have been other times in
history when discoveries and breakthroughs were made that,
though less frequent, were just as important. For example,
when did we first have vaccines? When did organ transplants
start? How long have we had X-rays? Read our timeline
and find out about eight events which we think were truly
groundbreaking – but remember, this is just a selection, you
can probably think of others.
1 In 1628 in England, William Harvey published a book
describing how blood is pumped throughout the body
by the heart and then returns to the heart and circulates
again. The book was very controversial, but it soon became
the basis of all modern research on the heart and blood.
2 In 1796, William Jenner was the first person to use
vaccination to prevent disease. When he gave a very small
dose of cowpox to an eight-year-old boy, the boy did not
get smallpox (a deadly disease at the time) when he was
exposed to it. We now have vaccinations against hundreds
of diseases, including killers like cholera and typhoid.
3 In 1816, René Laënnec invented the stethoscope in Paris.
It was made of wood. From then on, doctors could detect
chest diseases, and the stethoscope is still widely used
today, though now they are usually metal. There are also
electronic versions.
4 In the 1870s, Louis Pasteur was at the forefront of
research into how germs carry disease. He is perhaps best
remembered for inventing a way to kill microorganisms
in milk that could cause disease, a process that is called
pasteurization.
5 1895 was the year that Wilhelm Röntgen invented the X-ray, which
now of course is commonly used to detect problems not only
with bones but also with organs like lungs. X-rays are problematical
because they use radiation, but it is hard to imagine modern
medicine without them.
6 Blood transfusions help to save thousands of lives every day,
but it was only in 1907 that the first successful and safe one was
performed, using what was then a new technique of classifying
blood into different types (A, B, O and so on). Before then,
transfusions had frequently not worked because not enough was
known about complications in mixing different blood types.
7 In 1953, Englishman Francis Crick and American James Watson
announced to the world that they had found the structure of the
DNA molecule, the basis of all life. From this discovery, hundreds of
medical advances have been made possible, including some in the
treatment of cancer and AIDS. (There have also been uses for DNA
in other walks of life, including crime resolution.)
8 In 1954, the first kidney transplant between humans was carried out
in the USA by Joseph Murray. It was between two men who were
identical twins. From that beginning, transplants of other human
organs, such as the liver and the heart, were developed, and they are
now fairly commonplace.
Discussion box
1 Which of the eight breakthroughs do you
think was the most significant? Why?
2 What medical breakthrough would you
like to see happen next?
3 Medical discoveries are often very
controversial. Give an example and reasons.
100
UNIT 13