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OFFICIAL51 Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 6 about underground sewers?

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Population Growth in Nineteenth-Century Europe
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Because of industrialization, but also because of a vast increase in agricultural output without which industrialization would have been impossible, Western Europeans by the latter half of the nineteenth century enjoyed higher standards of living and longer, healthier lives than most of the world’s peoples. In Europe as a whole, the population rose from 188 million in 1800 to 400 million in 1900. By 1900, virtually every area of Europe had contributed to the tremendous surge of population, but each major region was at a different stage of demographic change.

Improvements in the food supply continued trends that had started in the late seventeenth century. New lands were put under cultivation, while the use of crops of American origin, particularly the potato, continued to expand. Setbacks did occur. Regional agricultural failures were the most common cause of economic recessions until 1850, and they could lead to localized famine as well. A major potato blight (disease) in 1846-1847 led to the deaths of at least one million persons in Ireland and the emigration of another million, and Ireland never recovered the population levels the potato had sustained to that point. Bad grain harvests at the same time led to increased hardship throughout much of Europe.

After 1850, however, the expansion of foods more regularly kept pace with population growth, though the poorer classes remained malnourished. Two developments were crucial. First, the application of science and new technology to agriculture increased. Led by German universities, increasing research was devoted to improving seeds, developing chemical fertilizers, and advancing livestock. After 1861, with the development of land-grant universities in the United States that had huge agricultural programs, American crop-production research added to this mix. Mechanization included the use of horse-drawn harvesters and seed drills, many developed initially in the United States. It also included mechanical cream separators and other food-processing devices that improved supply.

The second development involved industrially based transportation. With trains and steam shipping, it became possible to move foods to needy regions within Western Europe quickly. Famine (as opposed to malnutrition) became a thing of the past. Many Western European countries, headed by Britain, began also to import increasing amounts of food, not only from Eastern Europe, a traditional source, but also from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Steam shipping, which improved speed and capacity, as well as new procedures for canning and refrigerating foods (particularly after 1870), was fundamental to these developments.

Europe's population growth included one additional innovation by the nineteenth century: it combined with rapid urbanization. More and more Western Europeans moved from countryside to city, and big cities grew most rapidly of all. By 1850, over half of all the people in England lived in cities, a first in human history. In one sense, this pattern seems inevitable growing numbers of people pressed available resources on the land, even when farmwork was combined with a bit of manufacturing, so people crowded into cities seeking work or other resources. Traditionally, however, death rates in cities surpassed those in the countryside by a large margin; cities had maintained population only through steady in-migration. Thus rapid urbanization should have reduced overall population growth, but by the middle of the nineteenth century this was no longer the case. Urban death rates remained high, particularly in the lower-class slums, but they began to decline rapidly.

The greater reliability of food supplies was a factor in the decline of urban death rates. Even more important were the gains in urban sanitation, as well as measures such as inspection of housing. Reformers, including enlightened doctors, began to study the causes of high death rates and to urge remediation. Even before the discovery of germs, beliefs that disease spread by "miasmas" (noxious forms of bad air) prompted attention to sewers and open garbage; Edwin Chadwick led an exemplary urban crusade for underground sewers in England in the 1830s. Gradually, public health provisions began to cut into customary urban mortality rates. By 1900, in some parts of Western Europe life expectancy in the cities began to surpass that of the rural areas. Industrial societies had figured out ways to combine large and growing cities with population growth, a development that would soon spread to other parts of the world.

11.Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 6 about underground sewers?

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正确答案:B
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【题目翻译】从关于地下排水道的第6段中可以推断出以下哪一个? A:19世纪30年代,它们在西欧的大部分地区变得很普遍。 B他们帮助减少了城市因疾病造成的死亡。 C他们导致发现疾病可能由细菌引起。 D他们鼓励人们离开农村搬到城市。 【判定题型】:根据题干中出现的关键词“imply”/“infer”/“suggest”等其他表示推断的词,判定本题为推理题。 【关键词定位】根据题干中的关键词“underground sewers”定位到最后一段中这段内容“Even before the discovery of germs, beliefs that disease spread by "miasmas" (noxious forms of bad air) prompted attention to sewers and open garbage;Edwin Chadwick led an exemplary urban crusade for underground sewers in England in the 1830s.” 【逻辑分析】定位句这段话是在说,即使在细菌被发现之前,人们也已经意识到下水道的清洁和垃圾清理很重要,而查德威克还在英国引领了模范性的城市运动,要求对城市下水道进行改革。从第六段整体来看,“underground sewers”提高城市卫生设施的一个范例,而这有助于降低疾病发生率,从而降低人口死亡率。这道题是一个正向推理的过程。 【选项分析】 A选项:19世纪30年代下水道在西欧大部分地区很普及,但根据文意我们知道,当时查德威克还在英国引领了模范性的整治下水道的运动,说明当时下水道并没有普及,故A与文章内容矛盾,排除。 B选项:他们帮助减少了城市因疾病造成的死亡。正确。 C选项:下水道的存在使得人们发现细菌可以引起疾病。错误,因为文章没有提到该信息,只是说在细菌被发现之前,人们已经开始注重下水道的清洁了。 D选项:鼓励人们离开农村,迁往城市。错误,因为文章中并没有提到这两者存在逻辑关联性。

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