English Literature - ...

About the passage

A.  Read to understand

1. Write T for statements that are true and F for those that are false.

a) Edward Jenner practised medicine in London for three years before returning to Berkeley.

b) Smallpox was a disease of the common man.

c) On publication, Jenner’s results were not quite well received.

d) Jenner’s vaccination became popular in other countries immediately after the publication of his journal.

e) The practice of variolation had originated in East Asia.

 

2. Answer the following questions.

a) How was Jenner’s apprenticeship useful in building his career?

 

b) What were the drawbacks of the earlier form of vaccination against smallpox that was available to the people?

 

c) What led Jenner to use matter from cowpox lesions to inoculate people against smallpox?

 

B.  Read to infer

1. Explain the line, ‘the disease respected no social class’.

 

2. Variolation was a ‘primitive form of vaccination’ because

a) it entirely failed in protecting the inoculated individuals from smallpox.

b) it belonged to a very early stage in the development of the smallpox vaccine.

c) it was practised for the very first time by the people living in the prehistoric age.

d) it could not provide protection without deliberately infecting healthy individuals.

 

3. Jenner did not immediately publicize the results of his experiment on James Phipps. Why?

 

4. The concluding part of the passage highlights Jenner’s

a) persuasiveness.   b) persistence.   c) shrewdness.   d)selflessness.

 

5. A scientific method involves the following steps: observing some phenomenon (O), providing a possible explanation (E), testing the explanation through repeated experiments (T), and reporting the results (R). Write (O), (E), (T), or (R) for these statements.

a) Jenner concluded that cowpox can act as a protective mechanism against smallpox.

b) Jenner noted that people suffering from cowpox do not become infected by smallpox.

c) Jenner published the book An Inquiry into the causes and Effects of the Vaiolae Vaccinae.

d) Jenner inoculated Phipps and others, first with cowpox matter and later with smallpox matter.

 

C.  Discuss

You read how Edward Jenner’s findings resulted in helping people build immunity towards smallpox. Can you think of the different ways in which we can strengthen our immune system (our body’s natural disease-fighting mechanism)? Discuss in class.