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IELTS Practice Reading: Note/Summary Completion ID: #56850 Hard Tuberculosis
Instructions
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Tap any word for its meaning

A 19th Century Killer Disease: Tuberculosis

In 1882, Robert Koch, a German country doctor, succeeded in isolating the bacillus of tuberculosis. This discovery came at a time when this disease was the greatest single killer of the human race.

All during the IQ4 century, it had spread remorselessly with the growth of cities, until it had reached epidemic proportions throughout the industrialized world.

Its record in the United States was one of frightful devastation. Immigrants from Europe, many of them debilitated from famines at home, flooded into the poorest and dirtiest sections of cities, there to die of the disease by the thousand. Working children were infected in staggering numbers. Hundreds of thousands of children worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. Chronically exhausted and undernourished, they made particularly susceptible victims. Since tuberculosis was not considered contagious, its victims spread the disease amongst those about them as they coughed, spat and drank from communal cups.

It is now known that tuberculosis is chiefly spread by droplet infection. It can also occur as a result of drinking unpasteurized milk from tubercular cows, where the pathogen penetrates the body through the alimentary canal. However, entry of the bacillus into the body is not necessarily followed by a clinical illness, the development of which depends on several other factors. Many people, for instance, seem to have a high natural resistance and although the acquired immunity is not fully understood, it has been proved that if a person contracts and recovers from a primary tuberculosis infection, he is less likely to develop active tuberculosis on subsequent exposure to the tubercle bacillus than a patient who has not previously been infected.

Tuberculosis has notoriously been associated with poverty, with its accompanying malnutrition, overcrowding and stress, and while the exact role of nutrition is uncertain, it seems that a diet based on cheap carbohydrate and a lack of protein and vitamins is another contributing factor.

In addition, a condition such as diabetes mellitus also leads to increased risk of developing the disease, and statistics from certain mining areas in Africa show that sufferers of respiratory' disorders, such as silicosis, are especially vulnerable to attacks of pulmonary tuberculosis.

The introduction of mass immunization against TB by the use of BCG vaccine, and of mass radiography, where it is possible to screen large numbers of people for early signs of tuberculosis, has dramatically reduced the incidence of the disease in the last few decades.

12 blanks 2 words max

Despite the fact that tuberculosis was the number one  in the 19th century, it was not proved that the disease was  until 1882 when Robert Koch succeeded in isolating the tubercle bacillus. While it is now well known that tuberculosis is spread by  infection, it is also evident that entry of the tubercle bacillus does not  lead to development of the disease. Although we do not yet fully understand  there is evidence to show that a person who has contracted and recovered from the disease is  likely to develop active tuberculosis on subsequent exposure to the bacillus than a patient who has not been  infected. As with all diseases spread by droplet infection, living in overcrowded insanitary conditions greatly increases the risk of . It is obvious, therefore, that in crowded cities the risk of contracting tuberculosis is far higher than in rural areas. Inadequate diet also seems to be a , and sufferers of conditions such as diabetes mellitus or  appear to have a lower effective degree of . In the last thirty years or so. many thousands of people throughout the world have been substantially protected from developing tuberculosis largely as a result of  programmes.

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