As protector of her family.s health,the poineer woman confronted situations she never imagined
before crossing the Mississippi.Few women came West prepared to deal with desert sunburn,
rattlesnake bites,or arrow wounds.Even when doctors were available,they were often no more
knowledgeable than their patients.And most patent(专利）
medicines were no more reliable than the
itinerant(巡游）
merchants who sold them.
In certain cases,a woman could draw upon the folk wisdom and remedies she had learned back
home;Western mosquitoes,for example,proved to be as repelled by a paste of vinegar and salt as were
their Eastern cousins.More often,however,a woman was
guided only by her own ingenuity in
concocting(调制的）tonics(补药），powders,poisons,and polishes from whatever she had at land:
salt made a passable toothpaste,gunpowder was applied to wants,and turpentine to open cuts,goose grease,skunk oil,and the ever present lard
were basic liniments;medicinal teas and tonics wen
brewed from sunflower seeds and roots.
36.Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?
A.Many people who went West were doctors.
B.Medicine and the people who sold it were not reliable.
C.Many pioneer women died from bites inflicted by snakes and mosquitoes.
D.Pioneer women had to invent their own remedies when they moved West.
37.According to the passage,why
were doctors in the West sometimes unable to help thei
patients?
A.They did not know how to treat the unfamiliar illnesses.
B.They were more interested in establishing practices in the cities.
C.They were more concerned with doing research than with treating patients.
D.They were often overcome by diseases caught from their patients.
38.Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about patent medicines?
A.They did not cost much.
B.They helped heal snake bites.
C.They did not work very well.
D.They had a strong taste.
39.It can be inferred that most of the pioneers referred to in the passage were originally from where
in the United States?
A.The desert.
B.The West.
C.The State of Mississippi.
D.The East.
40.As used in line 8,the word"cousins"
refers to
A.similar medicines
B.mosquitoes in the East
C.people with the same beliefs
D.family members in the West
Passage Three
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