【外研社Unipus】新探索（基础级）读写U3课文.pptxVIP

Reading 1 Academic exploration 1 Fighting cholera 1 Cholera is a disease that is transmitted by drinking water contaminated with bacteria. It leads to diarrhea, which can result in high levels of dehydration. Today, according to the World Health Organization, around three to five million people are infected with cholera. These days the disease can successfully be treated provided that drinking water with added salt is consumed. As a result of this cheap and effective treatment, most people survive. However, the number of people that die from cholera still exceeds 100,000 every year. Reading 1 Academic exploration 1 2 Around the world there have been many outbreaks of cholera that have killed millions of people. During the First Industrial Revolution, the disease started to become an even bigger killer. Transported between major towns and cities by people buying and selling goods, once the disease reached a new area, many people were quickly infected, and it caused many pandemics. A pandemic is an outbreak of a disease that rapidly leads to large numbers of people being affected. As more and more people moved to cities, the infrastructure of many places did not undergo a development process at the required rate. Sewers were not built quickly enough to take human waste away, and many major rivers and other sources of water became polluted. Reading 1 Academic exploration 1 3 In the early days, most people thought that cholera was spread through polluted air. Known as the miasma theory, the visible effects of heavy industry understandably led people to suspect that bad air was the cause of the pandemic. The actual cause of the spread of infectious diseases – germ theory – was not yet known. This theory, suggested by Louis Pasteur, argued that small organisms, too small to see with the human eye, grow and reproduce on people, plants, and animals. However, one local doctor, John Snow, was not convinced that the miasma theory was how cholera spread. Reading 1 Academic expl