7 . Recently, soap sales in the UK have more than doubled. This substance has a unique chemical make-up that allows it to get rid of viruses, breaking up bacteria in a short period of time. It has truly been a life-saving straw during fighting against dangerous diseases.
Invented in the ancient world, the first soap was just a paste made from fat and ash. People discovered it while trying to remove the substances with oil from wool, noticing that mixing burnt wood with water made the process easier. Over time, people improved the soap-making process, learning to boil the fat and ash together to create soap before applying it to their cloth. By the Middle Ages, soap makers had started to spring up in Europe, where cloth production was big business. They cut down huge forests to make ash and mixed that ash with whatever fat they had available.
It wasn’t until the 1800s that the cleaning power of soap was properly released. Around that time, illnesses like typhoid (伤寒) and cholera were widespread. Most people didn’t have easy access to running water, and many believed that washing their skin would cause disease. But this was the century of public health, and that was all about to change.
Louis Pasteur proved that viruses made people sick. John Snow noticed that cholera was spread by dirty water and doctors made the link between the degree of hand cleanness and the spread of dangerous diseases. As a result, local governments started to install public health equipment in towns and cities, dealing with waste water properly and supplying their populations with clean water.
Soap makers started to put effort into making gentler soaps for use on skin, adding perfumes and dyes to make their products more appealing. And people finally started using it to wash their hands and bodies, greatly improving their health.
1. What does the underlined word “process” in paragraph 2 refer to?
| A．Inventing the first soap. | B．Breaking up bacteria. |
| C．Mixing burnt wood with water. | D．Removing oil from wool. |
2. What is mainly discussed in paragraph 2?
| A．The development of soap making. |
| B．The benefit of using soaps regularly. |
| C．The cause of the increase of soap sales. |
| D．The side effect of soap industry on ecology. |
3. Why are typhoid and cholera mentioned in the text?
| A．To introduce the origin of running water. |
| B．To illustrate the background to the invention of soap. |
| C．To stress the importance of public health equipment. |
| D．To present the effectiveness of soap in preventing diseases. |
4. What does the author want to stress in the text?
| A．The different opinions on soap. |
| B．The role of soap in our healthy life. |
| C．The application of soap in medicine. |
| D．The improvement of soap in the future. |
