1 . A few months ago, I got a terrible cold which ended in a cough that was hard to get rid of (摆脱). No matter how many different medicines I tried, I _________ couldn’t get rid of the cough. It made both my teaching and my life _________.

Then one day after class, a student came up to me and _________ traditional Chinese medicine. From her description, it seemed that Chinese medicine had magic power and could work _________. I was _________ because I knew so little about it and have never tried it before. _________ my cough got so much worse that I couldn’t sleep at night, so I decided to give it a _________. The Chinese doctor took my pulse and asked to see my _________, both of which were new experience to me because they are both nonexistent in Western medicine, where diagnosis (诊断) relies heavily on _________. Then the doctor gave me a scraping treatment known as “Gua Sha”. I was a little __________ at first because he used a smooth edged tool to scrape the skin on my neck and shoulders.

A few minutes later, the treatment started to produce a __________ effect and my body and mind began to sink deeper into __________. I didn’t feel much improvement in my __________ in the first couple of days, but after a few more regular visits to the doctor, my cough started to __________. Then within a matter of weeks, it was completely __________!

3 . Did you know it's possible to swim with whales in the ocean while lying on a hospital bed?Have you imagined experiencing your 74th birthday as a 20-something? Medical virtual (虚拟的) reality is an area with interesting and attractive possibilities. Although the field is brand new, there are already great examples of VR having a positive effect on health care. Here are some.

Have you ever lain down on a hospital bed counting the days until you leave the hospital? Brennan Spiegel and his team at the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles introduced VR worlds to their patients to help them reduce stress and pain. With the special glasses, they could escape the four walls of the hospital and enjoy amazing scenery in Iceland, take part in the work of an art studio or swim together with whales in the ocean. So the hospital experience is improved.

As we know, the experience in a hospital is even more stressful for small children who miss their parents and friends. Now a Dutch company made their dream possible. Through a smart phone and virtual glasses, VisitU makes live contact possible with a 360 degree camera at the patient's home, school or special occasions like a birthday celebration or a football game. Though staying in hospital, young patients can relax and still enjoy their lives.

Did you wonder what it feels like to grow old? Embodied Labs created “We Are Alfred” by using VR technology to show young medical students what aging means. Everyone can be the imagined Alfred for 7 minutes, and experience what it feels like to live as a 74-year-old man. Thus it's possible to solve the disconnection between young doctors and elderly patients due to their huge age difference.

Mind MotionPro, produced by the Swiss Mindmaze allows patients with a brain injury to “practice” how to lift their arms or move their fingers with the help of virtual reality. The app makes the practice of repetitive (重复的) movements fun for patients. The mental effort helps their damaged nervous systems to recover much faster than lying helplessly in bed.

6 . “New and improved. “These words are put in so many marketing campaigns that we tend to accept them as linked. But many new drugs aren’t an improvement over the best existing drug for a given condition, and the fast drug-approval processes in recent years have added to the uncertainty about their advantages.

A recent report in the British Medical Journal, “New Drugs: Where Did We Go Wrong and What Can We Do Better? “Analyzed the issue. The authors looked at 216 drugs approved between 2011 and 2017:152 were newly developed, and 64 were existing medicine approved for new uses. Only 25%offered a major advantage over the established treatment, and fully 58%had no confirmed added benefit to reduce symptoms or improve health-related quality of life.

“This doesn’t mean there’s no added benefit, “lead author Wissler said. “It just means we have no positive proof. Either we have no studies or have studies not good enough. “Wissler and her co-authors work for a German institute which evaluates new treatments and advises on whether the country’s health care system should pay a premium(补贴)for them. Such organizations, known as health technology assessment(HTA)agencies, work a little differently in the US, says Sean Tunisia researcher in Baltimore: “If payers think a new drug isn’t better than an existing drug, these agencies will require that hospitals try the cheaper drug first.”

Germanys HTA demands trials to prove that a new treatment beats the existing standard. This isn’t always practical. For one thing, such studies can be expensive and time-consuming, with no guarantee of success. Secondly, it can discourage companies from attempting to develop new alternatives. This is already happening. Drug developers are increasingly focused on areas where there are no good treatments to compete with, such as rare diseases.

This lack of meaningful data to guide patients is a major point of Wissler’s paper. With accelerated approval, there are more products approved, with a greater amount of uncertainty about risks and benefits. But there are other solutions besides drug trials. One idea is to require postmarked studies to track the effectiveness of newly approved drugs—a step too often neglected.

8 . Each year there are at least five million people around the world who develop serious flu (流感), and almost half a million deaths. When someone we know gets the flu virus, we expect them to be very careful not to pass it on to others. Doctors and nurses working with flu patients also need to protect themselves from the virus. But what is the best way to do this? This is the question that flu expert Professor Jonathan

Van-Tam at Nottingham University is trying to answer. He wants to find out how flu is transmitted, so that he can stop doctors and nurses getting sick.

Van-Tam explains their method, "There are 41 volunteers in my experiment. Some healthy volunteers are made to get flu first. When they show symptoms   (症状 )   , other volunteers, usually called recipients(接受者), enter the house. Everyone lives together in the small space for four days. Some of the recipients wear face masks, and wash their hands every 15 minutes, but some have no protection. In this way we can study who catches the flu and which ways of transmitting flu are important. During the four days when they are in contact with the virus, and for the ten days after that, the flu recipients are checked regularly."

The experiment is not simple and it is very expensive. It is difficult to design correctly, and it is also difficult to plan and carry out. Just one study like this takes about 18 months to organize and needs hundreds of people working on it. But Van-Tam believes it is worth because the results will help to decide what type of protection is needed for people working in hospitals with large numbers of flu patients around the world. And perhaps it could reduce the number of deaths from flu each year.