Question

Read the passage given below carefully and answer the questions that follow :
1 Occasional self-medication has always been part of normal behaviour in India. Only during the last hundred years or so has the development of scientific techniques made diagnosis possible. The doctor is now able to follow up the correct diagnosis of many illnesses — with specific treatment of their causes. In many other illnesses of which the cause remains unknown, he is still limited to the treatment of symptoms. The doctor is trained to decide when to treat symptoms only and when to attack the cause. This is the essential difference between medical prescribing and self-medication.
2 The advance of technology has brought about much progress in some fields of medicine, including the development of scientific drug therapy. In many countries public health organisation is improving and people’s nutritional standards have risen. Parallel with such beneficial trends are two trends which have an adverse effect: one is the use of high-pressure advertising by the pharmaceutical industry which has tended to influence both patients and doctors and has led to the overuse of drugs generally. The other is the emergence of the sedentary society with its faulty ways of life: lack of exercise, overeating, unsuitable eating, insufficient sleep, smoking and drinking. People with disorders arising from faulty habits such as these, as well as from unhappy human relationships, often resort to self-medication and so add the taking of medicines to the list. Advertisers go to great lengths to catch the market.
3 Clever advertising, aimed at chronic sufferers who will try anything because doctors have not been able to cure them, can induce such
faith in a preparation, particularly if steeply priced, that it will produce — by suggestion though — a very real effect in some people.
Advertisements are also aimed at people suffering from mild complaints such as simple cold and cough which clear up by themselves within a short time.
4 These are the main reasons why laxatives, indigestion-remedies, painkillers, cough mixtures, tonics, vitamins and iron tablets, etc. are found in many households. It is doubtful if taking these things ever improves a person’s health, it may even make it worse. Worse, because the preparation may contain unsuitable ingredients; worse because the taker may become dependent on them; worse because they might be taken in excess; worse because they may cause food poisoning and worst of all because symptoms of some serious underlying cause may be masked and therefore medical help may not be sought. Self-diagnosis is a greater danger than self-medication.
2.1 On the basis of your understanding of the above passage, make notes on it using headings and subheadings. Use recognisable abbreviations (wherever necessary – minimum four) and a format you consider suitable. Also supply an appropriate title to it.
2.2 Write a summary of the above passage in about 100 words.

Answer 1

Answer:

These are main reasons why laxatives indigestion remedies, painkillers, cough mixture, tonics, vitamins and iron tablets, etc. are found in many household. It is doubtful if taking this things ever improves a human being health, it may even make it worse

Answer 2

Indian people relied on self-medication for hundreds of years

Explanation:

• However, in the twentieth century, India progressed and developed various useful drugs to cure diseases
• These drugs proved to be useful but soon people started misusing it
• Nowadays, pharmacies even advertise drugs and medicine on the TV
• People keep drugs and medicine at home and use them even when they get mild cold or a headache which is dangerous