Zzzzzz…

Insomnia isn’t good for you. Complete lack of sleep will kill you more quickly than complete lack of food. Elephants and dolphins can survive happily with 2 hours of sleep out of every 24, but the average night’s sleep among normal human beings is now reckoned to be 7 hours 36 minutes.

People in their fifties tend to sleep less than those in their twenties, but people in their sixties get more sleep than at any time since childhood. Men sleep ten minutes more than women, and the difference rises to 20 minutes more in their fifties and 50 minutes more in the seventies.

(by Gyles Brandreth – adapted)

Yee Tin Medical Oil

This medical oil is a well balanced preparation, combining a number of oils of healing qualities with several curative botanical extracts.

Yee Tin Medical Oil brings immediate relief to cold, weakness in the limbs, sunstroke, phlegm, indigestion, diarrhoea and vomiting, intestinal colic, nausea, cough, heartburn, stomachache, rheumatism, gout, toothache, cramps, lumbago, cuts, sprains, swellings, boils, scabies, itches, insect bites, seasickness, trainsickness. It is also extraordinarily effective in cases of burns, cuts, insect-bites, skin irritation etc. In cases of diarrhoea and vomiting, a few drops of this oil will suffice to relieve the patient from agony. Yee Tin Medical Oil is also good for various ailments among domestic animals and cattle.

Application of this oil outside the nostrils and rubbing it on the temples stimulates the nerve system. Stomachache can be relieved quickly with hard rubbing. Coughing can be eased by applying and rubbing this oil on the front part of the neck and chest. Other special merits of Yee Tin Medical Oil include stimulating circulation, quickly relieving aches and pains, soothing irritation, and easing the nasal stuffy feeling.

Be sure to have a bottle of Yee Tin Medical Oil handy, at home or on a trip. Beware of cheap imitations. Always look for the Buddha Trade Mark.

When a Cuppa Could Kill

A screech of brakes, a deadening crash … and you realize there’s a road accident just outside your front door. You’ve phoned for the police and an ambulance. What’s your next step – put on a pot of tea or break out the brandy bottle?

That could be the most dangerous thing possible, say the experts who deal with accidents.

Nothing at all must be taken by mouth – not even tea. Mr D.J. Fuller, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, said: «Anyone involved in an accident, even injured in a fall down the stairs, may need an operation. To give a general anaesthetic after drinking or eating could be very dangerous».

(source unknown)

II. Being a patient

2.1. Work in groups. Ask your partners these questions:

• How many different illnesses or diseases can you think of?

• Have you ever had any medical problems?

• Do you consult a doctor if you have a problem with your health?

• Have you ever had an experience of being a patient?

2.2. Read the text, using the words in the boxes to fill the gaps.

a great deal germ hospital infection

injections joint pain powerful rub

I spent two weeks in _____ once. I wouldn’t want to do it again, but it was an interesting and valuable experience from which I learnt _____.

I had a serious _____ of the hip _____. I was rushed into hospital in great _____, after my doctor had finally decided that the problem was something he couldn’t deal with. (He thought I had a muscle strain, and gave me some ointment to _____ on.) Fortunately the hospital doctors quickly identified the _____ that was causing the trouble, and were able to treat the infection.

After the first couple of days I felt more or less all right. I was strapped down on a frame to stop me moving the joint, and I had _____ penicillin _____ every three hours day and night, but I was reasonably comfortable.

apparently best blood bones drugs human beings operations reality staff underpaid uniforms ward

Nobody was quite sure why it had happened, but I’d been living alone and not eating well for some time, and _____ lack of proper food had lowered my resistance, so that my _____ wasn’t able to fight the infection.

I was in a _____ with about twenty other people. Most of them were chronic arthritis sufferers who had been in and out of hospital for years for _____. The surgeons did the _____ they could, but very few of these people could be cured. They had serious damage to their _____ and joints, and most of them needed _____ to relieve their pain.

I’ll never forget the way your world shrinks in hospital. After a week or so, the only _____ is inside the walls of your ward. Everything outside becomes like a dream.

I developed a great admiration for the hospital _____. The doctors were superb, and they certainly saved my life by their prompt diagnosis and treatment. The nurses were overworked and _____, but they were amazingly cheerful and competent. And I found out that under those _____ there were some very interesting _____.

damage efforts experience got over hip illness stiff weak

After eight weeks or so I was more or less cured. I was taken off the frame and allowed to start trying to walk again. At first my muscles were so _____, and my joints so _____, that I couldn’t stand up, but I made enormous _____ to get fit again, and my strength soon come back.

I was very lucky. I came out of the hospital with nothing worse than slight _____ to the _____ joint, which has never caused me any trouble or stopped me doing what I wanted to.

I _____ the _____ relatively quickly. But the _____ of those ten weeks is something that I’ll never get over. It wasn’t a good thing to do, but in some ways it’s a good thing to have done.

2.3. Read the text. Then write down as quickly as you can words or expressions in the text which mean:

stays certain mix milk / sugar into as well as puts on pull strengthened live longer than kill themselves