Short Conversations.

Calling First Aid.

“Hello!”

“First Aid here. What happened?”

“A man here is having a serious heart trouble.”

“Name and age?”

“Skidoo, 58 years old.”

“Address?”

“Number 24, May Street, Flat 16.”

“A car will arrive in ten minutes.”

I don’t feel well.

“What’s the matter with you, sonny, where does it hurt?”

“I don’t feel well.”

“Where is the pain?”

“I’ve got a very bad headache and my nose is running.”

“You have caught a cold. Take this pill. Have a cup of hot tea with honey and go to bed.”

At the Doctor’s.

“Take off your jacket and shirt and let me examine you.”

“All right, Doctor.”

“You don’t cough, I suppose, or feel any pain anywhere, do you?”

“No, doctor, not at all, I fell quite well.”

“Fine, now le me listen to your heart…With a heart like that you will live to be two hundred. Now, what about your stomach? Lie down and I’ll see if anything is wrong there…This was where you had the pains when you were ill, wasn’t it? Any pain now?”

“Yes, that was the place, doctor, but it doesn’t hurt at all now.”

“Well, a few weeks at a sanatorium in Kislovodsk will do you a world of good, I think. Get dressed now while I write out your papers.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Text 6. At the doctor’s.

1.

Doctor: Would you like to come in?

Patient: Thank you.

Doctor: That cough sounds really very bad. How long have you had it?

Patient: Two days now.

Doctor: I think I should listen to your chest and lungs. Take off your shirt. Breathe in deeply; and again, please; and once more, please. Sit down. You can put on your shirt. I’m going to take your blood pressure. Well, your blood pressure is 110 to 70. It’s normal. I think you’ve got a bad cold.

Patient: what should I do?

Doctor: I’ll describe you some medicine. It’s nothing serious but you’d better stay in bed for some days. Take the medicine regularly, three times a day. Drink warm milk with honey and you will recover soon.

Patient: Thank you very much, doctor. Good-bye.

2.

Doctor: Who is the next?

Patient: Good day, doctor.

Doctor: Come in, please. Sit down. What is your complaint?

Patient: I keep feeling dizzy and I’ve got a headache. Maybe I’ve got a fever?

Doctor: I should take your temperature. Oh, your temperature is running. 38 degrees. Show me your throat. You have a sore throat.

Patient: Yes, it’s difficult for me to swallow and to breathe.

Doctor: I should feel your pulse. It’s serious. I think you have quinsy.

Patient: What should I do?

Doctor: I’ll prescribe some medicine for you. Ask somebody to go and buy the medicine at the chemist’s. And you must immediately go home and go to bed. I’ll come to see you in a couple of days.

Patient: Thank you, doctor. Good-bye.

Text 7. At the dentist’s.

Once I had a toothache for several days, but I couldn’t pluck up courage to go to the dentist. As a matter of fact I went twice, but just as I got on his doorstep and was going to ring the bell the toothache seemed to have gone away, so I went home again. But at last I had to go back, and this time I rang the bell and I was shown into the waiting- room.

There were a number of magazines there, and I had just got in the middle of an exciting story when the maid came in to say Mr. Puller was ready to see me – I’ll have to wait for the next toothache to fish the story.

Well, I went into the surgery (the room where a doctor or dentist gives advice or treatment) and he told me to sit in a chair that he could move up and down, backwards and forwards, and then he had a look at the inside of my mouth. He put a little mirror on a long handle inside my mouth and pocked about for a while, then he looked serious and said, “Yes, I’m afraid we can’t save that one, it will have to come out.”

I asked him to give me an injection. He filled a syringe with a liquid called cocaine. I felt a little prick on the gum and then injected the cocaine. He did this in two or three places and waited for a minute or so.

My mouth felt rather dead. Then he took a pair of forceps, gripped the tooth, gave a twist, then a pull, and the tooth was out. I could see it and hear it but I couldn’t feel it. Then he said, “It’s all over. Spit in there and then wash your mouth out with this disinfectant.”

Text 8. What the doctor wrote.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some illness of which I had a touch. I got down the book and read all I came to read and then, in an unthinking moment, I turned the pages and began to study illnesses generally. I forget which the first I read about was but before I had looked down the list of symptoms, I was sure I had it.

Then I turned over the pages again. I came to typhoid fever-read the symptoms-discovered that I had typhoid fever-wondered what else I had and so started to read alphabetically. I read through the twenty-six letters and found out that I had all the illnesses.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel my pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I took out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. But I could not feel or hear anything…I went to my medical man. He is an old friend of mine, and feels my pulse, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I think I am ill.

The doctor looked at me and said, “Well, what’s the matter with you?”

I said, “I shall not take your time, dear boy, with telling you what the matter with me is. Life is short and you might die before I have finished.

And I told him everything.

Then he opened me and looked down me. After that he sat down and wrote a prescription, and gave it to me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s and handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it.

I said, “Are you a chemist?”

He said, “I am a chemist, not a co-operative store and family hotel combined”.

I read the prescription.

“I pound beefsteak, with

I bottle of beer ever six hours.

I ten-mile walk every morning.

I bed at 11 every night.

And don’t fill up your head with things you don’t understand.”

(After Jerome K. Jerome)

Text 9. AIDS.

AIDS is an insidious and up to the present moment incurable but less contagious disease than measles or hepatitis B. AIDS is thought to be caused primarily by a virus that invades white blood cells (lymphocytes) and certain other body cells, including the brain.

In 1983 and 1984, French and U.S. researchers independently identified the virus believed to cause AIDS as an unusual type of slow-acting retrovirus now called «human immunodeficiency virus» or HIV. Like other viruses, HIV is basically a tiny package of genes. But being a retrovirus, it has the rare capacity to copy and insert its genes right into a human DNA. Once inside a human host cell, the retrovirus using its own capacities begins to copy its genetic code into a DNA molecule which is then incorporated into the host's DNA. The virus becomes an integral part of the person's body. But the viral DNA may sit hidden and inactive within human cells for years, until some trigger stimulates it to replicate. Thus HIV may not produce illness until its genes are «turned on » five, ten, fifteen or perhaps more years after the initial infection.

During the latent period, HIV carriers who harbor the virus without any sign of illness can unknowingly infect others. On average, the dormant virus seems to be triggered into action three to six years after first invading human cells. When switched on, viral replication may speed along, producing new viruses that destroy fresh lymphocytes. As viral replication spreads, the lymphocyte destruction virtually sabotages the entire immune system. In essence, HIV viruses do not kill people, they merely render the immune system defenseless against other infections, e.g. yeast invasions, toxoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus, massive herpes infections, special forms of pneumonia that kill in half of all AIDS patients.

That is AIDS. There are several types of AIDS. No one has been cured up to the present moment.

Text 10. Medical Care in Great Britain and the United State.

In Britain, there is a National Health Service (the NHS), which is paid for by taxes and national insurance, and in general people do not have to pay for medical treatment. Every person is registered with a doctor in their local area, known as a general practitioner or GP. This means that their name is on the GP’s list, and they may make an appointment to see the doctor or may call the doctor out to visit them if they are sick. People do sometimes have to pay part of the cost of drugs that the doctor prescribes. GPs are trained in general medicine but are not specialist in my particular subject. If a patient needs to see a specialist doctor, they must first go to their GP and then GP will make an appointment for the patient to see a specialist at a hospital or clinic.

Although everyone in Britain can have free treatment under the NHS, it is also possible to have treatment done privately, for which one has to pay. Some people have private health insurance to help them pay for private treatment. Under the NHS, people who need to go to the hospital may have to wait a long time on a waiting list for their treatment.

Anyone who is very sick can call an ambulance and get taken to the hospital for free urgent medical treatment. Ambulances are a free service in Britain.

American hospitals are in general well-equipped and efficient, and doctors earn incomes far above the general average. For anyone who is sick, cost of the treatment is very high. There is a strong prejudice against “socialized medicine”, and there are only two federal health programs. Medicare provides nearly free treatment for the elderly people do not recover the full cost or some types of expensive treatment. Even so, the cost of Medicare to federal funds rose to seventy billion dollars in 1985 or more than two thousand dollars for each of the thirty million participants. Medicaid, for the poor, varies from one state to another because the states are heavily involved in it and some contribute more generously than others. Working people and their families are normally insured through private plans against possible loss of earnings if they are sick. The plans are often operated by deductions from one’s salary. They too enormously expensive and the cost are rising. No single insurance system is absolutely comprehensive; some people have more than one policy and yet remain liable to bear some costs themselves. Among ordinary people anxiety about the possibility of illness is accentuated by fears about its cost. These fears are reflected in some resentment against the medical profession, and this resentment is not alleviated by doctors’ reluctance to visit patients in their homes. When people are sick, they usually go first to an internist. Unlike in Britain, however, people sometimes go straight to a specialist, without seeing their general practitioner first. Children are usually taken to a pediatrician. As in Britain, if a patient needs to see a specialist, their general doctor will usually give them the name of one. Doctors do not go to people’s homes when they are ill. People always make appointments to see the doctor in the doctor’s office. In emergencies, people call an ambulance. Hospitals must treat all emergency patients, even if the patient does not have medical insurance. The government would then help pay for some of the cost of the medical care.