单选题
Passage 5 Darkness approached and a cold,
angry wind gnawed at the tent like a mad dog. Camped above treeline in the Wind
River Mountains of Wyoming, the torrents of air were not unexpected and only a
minor disturbance compared to the bestial gnawing going on behind my belly
button. In an attempt to limit exposure of my bare bottom to the ice-toothed
storm, I had pre-dug a half dozen catholes within dashing distance. Over and
over, through the long night, the same scenario was repeated: out of the bag,
out of the tent, rush, squat, rush back. "Everyone can master a grief," wrote
Shakespeare, "but he that has it." Diarrhea, the modern word,
resembles the old Greek expression for "a flowing through." Ancient Egyptian
doctors left descriptions of the suffering of Pharaohs scratched on papyrus even
before Hippocrates, the old Greek, gave it a name few people can spell
correctly. An equal opportunity affliction, diarrhea has laid low kings and
common men, women, and children for at least as long as historians have recorded
such fascinating trivia. It wiped out, almost, more soldiers in America's Civil
War than guns and swords. In the developing world today, acute diarrhea strikes
more than one billion humans every year, and leaves more than five million dead,
usually the very young. Diarrhea remains one of the two most common medical
complaints of humanity. "Frequent passage of unformed watery
bowel movements," as described by Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary,
diarrhea falls into two broad types: invasive and non-invasive. From bacterial
sources, invasive diarrhea, sometimes called "dysentery," attacks the lower
intestinal wall causing inflammation, abscesses, and ulcers that may lead to
mucus and blood (often "black blood" from the action of digestive juices) in the
stools, high fever, "stomach" cramps from the depths of hell, and significant
amounts of body fluid rushing from the patient's nether region. Serious
debilitation, even death, can occur from the resulting dehydration and from the
spread of the bacteria to other parts of the body. Non-invasive diarrhea grows
from colonies of microscopic evil-doers that set up housekeeping on, but do not
invade, intestinal walls. Toxins released by the colonies cause cramps, nausea,
vomiting, and massive gushes of fluid from the patient's lower intestinal tract.
Non-invasive diarrhea carries a high risk for dehydration.
单选题
In Paragraph 1, the author uses the quoted word "grief" from
Shakespeare to refer to ______.
A. the terrible weather
B. the stern army life
C. the suffering from diarrhea
D. the tough wartime.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】
单选题
According to the description in Paragraph 1, which of the following
did the author NOT do at that time?
A. Withstanding the coldness.
B. Camping in the mountains.
C. Getting up repeatedly at night.
D. Reading Shakespeare in bed.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】
单选题
Who first gave the disease the name "diarrhea"?
A. Ancient Egyptians.
B. An old Greek.
C. American soldiers.
D. The passage doesn't tell.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】
单选题
According to Paragraph 2, ______.
A. people of higher status are less likely to be stricken with
diarrhea
B. diarrhea is no longer a serious disease in the modem world
C. diarrhea has been a threat to humanity throughout history
D. the elderly are more likely attacked by diarrhea than the young
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】
单选题
The invasive diarrhea and the non-invasive diarrhea are different in
that ______.
A. the former attacks the intestine walls but the latter does not
B. the former causes dehydration but the latter does not
C. the former makes the patient physically weaker than the latter