What I read
On page 47 of Skillful, Bixby and Scanlon (2013) use the usual large photograph and some discussion questions to introduce unit 6, whose title is "Disease".
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Bixby and Scanlon's questions
In a comment or two discuss one or two of these questions:
- How have medical technology and treatment changed since your grandparents were young? What about your parents? How have they changed in your lifetime?
- What are some interesting of amazing uses of technology in modern medicine? List as many as you can.
- What types of medical advances do you think, or hope, the future will bring?
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Reference
- Bixby, J. & Scanlon, J. (2013). Skillful Reading & Writing: Student's Book 3. Oxford: Macmillan Education
The first thing that I thought of when comparing medicine today with the past was an image of my father in hospital when I was about ten. The most sophisticated piece of equipment I could see was a triangle hanging over his bed that he could use to lift himself up into a sitting position. Today, my mum's bed at home automatically does that for her her, and when i was in hospital for serious food poisoning a few years ago, it was very comfortable, with running air supplies, wifi and the usual accompaniments of decent hotel room. And of course the drugs are much better today: in the 1980s and early 90s, half of my friends died horribly of AIDS, which just doesn't happen today thanks to advances in medicine.
ReplyDeleteAnd a few years ago, one of my friends had surgery on his stomach, but instead of a large cut, the surgeon used key-hole surgery, where everything was done through a tiny cut that then healed very quickly.
Another of my own experiences was last year when I had a cancer scare and got to watch the screen as an ENT specialist examined my throat with a thin cable that went up my nose and down. It was surprisingly easy to do and I felt no discomfort, perhaps because of the anaesthetic. It was a bit gross but fun to see what the inside of my throat looked like, and to be reassured that it was all pink and healthy as it should be.
We can see that medical technology and treatment has change dramatically in the past 10 - 20 years. It is sad ,but true that our previous generation have no optional to heal themselves. They normally go to hospital to meet doctor. The number of doctor might not balance with the number of patients. Therefore, doctor can do their best as much as they can without technology support such as MRI, X-ray machine or even computer system in the hospital. In the modern world, These technology support doctor to analyse correctly. When doctor have advanced technology, the rate of dead has decreased.
ReplyDeletepersonally, I amaze MRI technology. It looks like x-ray machine which can scan our body in micro scale to help doctor analyse before surgery.
Medical Technology has dramatically changed from when my grandparents were young. In the old days, people didn't have much knowledge about diseases and diagnosis. My grand parents depend on the Chinese old medical which drugs were made from herbs and animal's substances. This is a reason why people in the past didn't live as long as people are in today.
ReplyDeleteThere were amazing technology uses in the modern medicine. I remembered there were small camera using for diagnose symptoms in the digest system.
Medical advances that I hope the future will bring would the effective prevention of some serious diseases like cancer.
ReplyDeleteIn the future, I hope medical will found a solution to cure a cancer. In the present, there is no solution for curing a cancer but just a treatment that make it less lethal.
ReplyDeleteWhen my grandparents were young, people uses herbs as a treatment for dicease and then as the time passed and many nations made a trade, we also received their medical technology and develop our own.
-Producing a vaccine for a dicease is one an interesting technology because the vaccine contained weak virus to let body immunity regcognize the dicease.