M7U2 reading Two life-saving medicines课文

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M7U2 Reading Two life-saving medicines

This article will focus on two drugs that started revolutions in medicine. If you open up any medicine cupboard or go to any medicine counter in the world, it is likely that you will find aspirin and penicillin. Both of these medicines have saved millions of people’s lives and have proved beneficial to mankind since they were invented.

Aspirin

Aspirin was invented in 1897. However, the basic chemical used to make aspirin can be found in nature. Nearly 3,500 years ago, people chewed on leaves or drank a kind of tea made from leaves possessing a special chemical to reduce body pains and fever. About 2,500years ago, the Greek physician Hippocrates, father of all doctors, made a juice from a tree bark containing salicylic acid for the same effect. It was in 1897 that a European chemist called Dr Felix Hoffmann produced aspirin from this chemical. The first trials of this medicine took place in 1899, when the company Hoffmann worked for began distributing the medicine in powder form to physicians to use with patients. A year later, in 1900, aspirin was sold in shops in the form of tablets. Within a short time, aspirin became the best-selling medicine in the world for pain relief .

Not only has aspirin proved vital for reducing fever and helping stop pain, but there are also other things that aspirin can help with. Lawrence Craven, a doctor from the USA, introduced the idea in 1953 that aspirin had the potential to reduce the risk of heart attacks, because it helped the blood circulate better. The report was ignored. However, in 1971, Smith and Willis from the UK proved that aspirin could have that effect, and in 1977 a study carried out in the USA showed that aspirin could prevent strokes. Eleven years later, Dr Thun from the USA showed that aspirin could reduce the risk of some cancers by 40 percent. In 1999, aspirin was over 100 years old, and yet there have been more discoveries about how it can help increase the length of peoples lives . In 2003, a Chinese doctor, Dr Yuan Minsheng, found that aspirin could reduce blood sugar levels and, therefore, help people with diabetes.

Penicillin

Another drug that has helped increase the standard of people’s health is penicillin, which is considered by many to be one of the most important medicines in contemporary society. It was discovered by a Scottish scientist named Alexander Fleming in 1928. He noted that a dish in which he was trying to grow bacteria for an experiment looked abnormal --- there was blue mould in it. It astonished him to see the bacteria surrounding the mould dead, which meant that the mould had killed them. Fleming tried this mould out on another bacterium and found that it killed that bacterium too. He immediately realized that the mould might have an application in treating illnesses caused by bacteria. He named the liquid made from the mould ‘penicillin’. However, the development of penicillin as a drug faced two problems. First, he was unable to find a procedure to make penicillin pure enough to work as a medicine. Second, it was difficult to produce penicillin in the ample quantities needed to be effective. In 1940, two other scientists helped solve these problems, and managed to make and test the new drug in large quantities. Since the new drug was needed for World War Ⅱ, the government approval process for penicillin was accelerated, and mass production began in 1944. Due to the widespread use of penicillin, many lives were saved during the war. If penicillin had not been available, many people would have died from sickness for even small wounds. Penicillin became the greatest drug of the 20th century, saving millions of lives .