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  3. Every Western doctor is required to take the Hippocratic oath, by which they swear to never harm their patients. Unfortunately,

Every Western doctor is required to take the Hippocratic oath, by which they swear to never harm their patients. Unfortunately,

admin2009-04-23  42
问题     Every Western doctor is required to take the Hippocratic oath, by which they swear to never harm their patients. Unfortunately, as medical history shows, many doctors did not make good on this promise. Instead, they resorted to quackery(庸医的医术),and made a living out of fooling people who sought medical help.
    In the past, quack doctors claimed to have "fixed" problems from poor eyesight to cancer and smallpox(天花). They claimed to be able to work medical miracles, relying on public ignorance of medicine for their "success". In addition, well-meaning doctors often advocated treatments that harmed their patients instead of helping them: procedures such as bloodletting often made worse the suffering they were intended to ease.
    The typical feature of quackery is ignorance. Unwary people are easily taken in by claims of the doctors they trust. For example, in the 1800s, psychologists commonly used basket-shaped devices to determine personality, with questionable benefit. Based on the idea that different parts of the brain control different character traits, the devices determined personality by measuring the size and shape of people’s heads!
    Of all the ridiculous devices created by quacks, the most inventive was perhaps the "radionic" machine. In the early 1900s, quacks claimed radionics could diagnose any sickness, even though the devices were just wooden boxes with lights inside. After radionic diagnosis, patients were sent home with the assurance that they would get well. No medicine was prescribed because, quacks claimed, the radionic machine would broadcast the cure to patients, much like radio stations broadcast music!
    The quackery of the 19th and early 20th centuries was not limited to the use of strange devices, nor to crooked doctors. Nor were quack procedures anything new.
    The practice of bloodletting had been a popular treatment for over a millennium. In the name of medicine, large volumes of blood were drained from people’s bodies to cure their sicknesses. Death, more often than not, was the outcome, though usually the disease was blamed rather than the loss of blood.
    It’s easy to look back on the past and brand questionable medical procedures as quackery. However, hindsight(事后诸葛亮)is 20/20. Perhaps in the future, people will look back on some of today’s medical practices with similar suspicion.
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答案public ignorance
解析 由题干中的take advantage of定位到文章第2段第2句They claimed to be able to work medical miracles， relying on public ignorance of medicine for their “success”。此处需要填入名词性成分，作take advantage of的宾语。题目中的take advantage of与文中的rely on同义，因此应填入public ignorance。
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