Medicine

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 550.

Unit 14. Culture, science and inventions of the XX century

Exercise 16. Make a short presentation of a famous person of the XX century.

Project

Exercise 15. Write any of the following compositions using 150 -200 words.

Writing

Exercise 13. Give a short summary of the text “Science and Mathematics”.

Exercise 12. Speak about culture and entertainment of the XX century using the words in bold from Exercise 2.

Exercise 14. Use the information from the internet or historical books/encyclopedias and speak about:

1.Genres of music, 2.My favourite music group/singer, 3. The modern art, 4. The modern architecture

1.The most important inventions of the XX century, 2.The first human spaceflight, 3.The first landing on the Moon, 4.The internet and its role in our life.

The discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming had changed the world of modern medicine by introducing the age of antibiotics. Placebo-controlled, randomized, blinded clinical trials became a powerful tool for testing new medicines.

Antibiotics drastically reduced mortality from bacterial diseases and their prevalence. A vaccine was developed for polio, ending a worldwide epidemic. Effective vaccines were also developed for a number of other serious infectious diseases, including influenza, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), chickenpox, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B. A successful application of epidemiology and vaccination led to the eradication of the smallpox virus in humans.

X-rays became powerful diagnostic tool for wide spectrum of diseases, from bone fractures to cancer. In the 1960s, computerized tomography was invented. Other important diagnostic tools developed were sonography and magnetic resonance imaging.

Development of vitamins virtually eliminated scurvy and other vitamin-deficiency diseases from industrialized societies.

New psychiatric drugs were developed. These include antipsychotics for treating hallucinations and delusions, and antidepressants for treating depression.

New methods for cancer treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy, were developed. As a result, cancer could often be cured or placed in remission.

The development of blood typing and blood banking made blood transfusion safe and widely available.

The invention and development of immunosuppressive drugs and tissue typing made organ and tissue transplantation a clinical reality.

Research on sleep and circadian rhythms led to the discovery of sleep disorders.

New methods for heart surgery were developed, including pacemakers and artificial hearts.

Cocaine/crack and heroin were found to be dangerous addictive drugs, and their wide usage had been outlawed; mind-altering drugs such as LSD and MDMA were discovered and later outlawed. In many countries, a war on drugs caused prices to soar 10x-20x higher, leading to profitable black market drugdealing, and to prison inmate sentences being 80% related to drug use by the 1990s.

Contraceptive drugs were developed, which reduced population growth rates in industrialized countries.

The development of medical insulin during the 1920s helped raise the life expectancy of diabetics to three times of what it had been earlier.

As a result of some of the above developments, most notably antibiotics and vaccines, child and young people's mortality decreased drastically. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_century