2) Questions for Discussion:

Why do scientists sometimes find it necessary to risk their lives during their research work?

Explain why cholera caused so many deaths in the past.

What is the most difficult thing in developing a new vaccine?

Say a few words about what each of the men did to discover means of killing pain.

Why was pure ether unsatisfactory as an anaesthetic?

Whose contribution to the research for painless operations do you think was the greatest? Why?

Speak on a serious problem of how far a modern scientist can go in experimenting upon himself for the sake of science. Can such risks be justified? What do you think?

Ponder on why mankind owes an everlasting debt to all pioneers in medical science.

1) Make sure you know the vocabulary: to thrive on, to isolate the hormone insulin, pancreas, the Islets of Langerhans, enzymes, digesting proteins, efficient viral vaccines, tissue culture, to be cultivated, to evolve methods, to be attenuated, virulent form, disturbing proclivity of the virus, a pandemic, medicosurgical responsibilities, remorselessly, the suturing of blood vessels, axial, to line up the protons, hydrogen atoms, align, give an image of any plane, iodine, blood supply, to pump into, coronary thrombosis, inflamed tissues, nerve tracts, a proton beam, to rotate from time to time, synchrocyclotron, polymerization, assortment, molten substances, a glass rod, strand, continuous fiber, lustrous, to spin into a fiber, abrasion, rot, mildew, oddity, to inaugurate, to break down into fragments, to produce in the usual fashion, a carbon copy, counterfeit, in essence, ewe’s udder, to implant.

2) Read and retell the following texts:

1912. Vitamins

In the field of nutrition the outstanding advance of the 20^th century was the discovery and the appreciation of the importance to health of the ‘‘accessory food factors”, or vitamins. Various workers had shown that animals did not thrive on a synthetic diet containing all the correct amounts of protein, fat, and carbohydrate; they even suggested that there must be some unknown ingredients in natural food that were essential for growth and the maintenance of health. But little progress was made in this field until the classical experiments of the English biologist F. Jowland Hopkins were published in 1912. The name “vitamine” was suggested for these substances by the biochemist Casimir Funk.

1921. Insulin Found to Treat Diabetes

In 1921, at the University of Toronto, Frederic Grant Banting and Charles H. Best conducted experiments that successfully isolated the hormone insulin. This hormone id used to control the disease diabetes. The name of the hormone is derived from the Latin word for island, insula, because the hormone is produced in the part of the pancreas called the Islets of Langerhans.

Although it had been known for some time that the pancreas made the enzymes responsible for digesting proteins, it had not been possible to isolate insulin.

Insulin is a protein and id digested by the enzymes. Ban ting and best used animal experiments to extract insulin and demonstrated that it stopped symptoms of diabetes. Commercial production of insulin uses pigs, oxen, and sheep as sources for the hormone.