大全32 第5题

powers

Increasingly, historiansare blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparitybetween the indigenous population of America in 1492—new estimates of whichsoar as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race atthat time—and the few million full-blooded (full-blooded: adj.多血性的, 纯血统的, 精神旺盛的) Native Americans aliveat the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic diseasewas an important factor in the precipitous decline, and it is highly probablethat the greatest killer was epidemic disease (epidemic disease: 流行病),especially as manifested in virgin-soil epidemics.
Virgin-soilepidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previouscontact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologicallyalmost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in Americanhistory is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerousmaladies—smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and undoubtedly severalmore—were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their suddenintroduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which containreports of horrendous epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed inmany cases by recent quantitative analyses of Spanish tribute records and othersources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French coloniesis not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establishpermanent settlements and begin to keep continuous records until theseventeenth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably alreadytaken place. Furthermore, the British tended to drive the native populationsaway, rather than enslaving them as the Spaniards did, so that the epidemics ofBritish America occurred beyond the range of colonists’ direct observation.
Even so, thesurviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemicsamong the indigenous population. In 1616-1619 an epidemic, possibly of bubonicor pneumonic plague, swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out often. During the 1630’s smallpox, the disease most fatal to the Native Americanpeople, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquoisconfederations. In the 1820’s fever devastated the people of the Columbia Riverarea, killing eight out of ten of them.
Unfortunately, thedocumentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable,and it is necessary to supplement what little we do know with evidence fromrecent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak ofmeasles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay, Quebec, affected99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had thebenefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseasesthat are not normally fatal can have devastating consequences when they strikean immunologically defenseless community.




5.     Theauthor implies which of the following about measles?
(A) It is notusually a fatal disease.
(B) It ceasedto be a problem by the seventeenth century.
(C) It is thedisease most commonly involved in virgin-soil epidemics.

(D) It was nota significant problem in Spanish colonies.（A）
(E) It affectsonly those who are immunologically defenseless against it.

我选的是E,看A的时候没看到not..

可是我觉得E也对啊,难道是only错了?