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  3. Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparity between the indigenous po

Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparity between the indigenous po

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问题     Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparity between the indigenous population of America in 1492—new estimates of which jump as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race at that time—and the few million full-blooded Native Americans alive at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic disease was an important factor in the precipitous decline, and it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin-soil epidemics.
    Virgin-soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in American history is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerous maladies—smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and undoubtedly several more—were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their sudden introduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which contain reports of horrendous epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by recent quantitative analyzes of Spanish tribute records and other sources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French colonies is not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establish permanent settlements and began to keep continuous records until the seventeenth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably already taken place. Furthermore, the British tended to drive the native populations away, rather than to enslave them as the Spaniards did, so that the epidemics of British America occurred beyond the range of colonists’ direct observation.
    Even so, the surviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemics among the native population. In 1616—1619 an epidemic, possibly of pneumonic plague, swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out of ten. During the 1630’s smallpox, the disease most fatal to the Native American people, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquois confederations. In the 1820’s fever devastated the people of the Columbia River area, killing eight out of ten of them.
    Unfortunately, the documentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable, and it is necessary to supplement what little we do know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak of measles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay,
    Quebec, affected 99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had the benefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseases that are not normally fatal can have destroying consequences when they strike an immunologically defenseless community.
Which of the following can be inferred from the text concerning the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay ?
选项 A、They could scarcely ward off the fatal attack by the 1952 epidemic.
B、They were immunologically defenseless against measles.
C、They were the last native people to be struck by a virgin-soil epidemic.
D、They did not come into frequent contact with White Americans until the 20th century.
答案B
解析 本题是一道推理判断题。第四段第二、三句写道：“例如，1952年在魁北克省Ungava海湾居住的美洲印第安人中爆发了一场麻疹，虽然有些人得益于现代医学，仍有99％的人口受到感染，7％的人口死亡。像这样的事例表明，即使在正常情况下，非致命的疾病在袭击无免疫力的社区时，也会产生毁灭性后果。”由此可知，Ungava海湾的美洲印第安居民麻疹感染率与死亡率如此高的原因是他们对麻疹无免疫性抵抗力。故答案应为B。
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考研英语一

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