IELTSwithJurabek

PASSAGE 2

Read the text and answer questions 14-26

The conquest of malaria in Italy

A review of Frank M Snowden's masterly history of a country's fight to eradicate a deadly disease

A The word 'malaria' means 'bad air' in Italian, and this terrible disease marked the life of the people of that country for thousands of years. Yet by 1962, Italy was officially declared malaria-free, and it has remained so ever since. Frank Snowden's study of this successful endeavour is a remarkable piece of historical work. Original, crystal clear, analytical and passionate, Snowden takes us to areas historians have rarely visited before.

B Everybody now knows that malaria is carried by mosquitoes. But in the 19th century most experts subscribed to the theory of 'miasma' or 'poisoning of the air'. Others made a link between swamps, water and malaria, but did not make the further leap towards insects. The consequence of these theories was that little was done to combat the disease before the end of that century. The situation was so serious that from a total population of 25m Italians, 11m were 'permanently at risk'. In warm, damp, malarial zones, the life expectancy of land workers was a terrifying 22.5 years. The economic impact of the disease was immense. Epidemics were blamed on people who originated from the hotter parts of Italy, given the widespread belief that malaria was hereditary.

C One of the first breakthroughs in the war against malaria came in 1898 when the zoologist Giovanni Battista Grassi demonstrated that the micro-organisms causing the disease were carried in the digestive tract of the mosquito. By releasing mosquitoes into rooms to drink the blood of healthy human volunteers, Grassi was able to make the direct link between the insects and the disease. Definitive proof of this theory was obtained after an extraordinary series of experiments in Italy, where healthy people were introduced into malarial zones but kept free of mosquito bites - and remained well. The recently formed Italian state at last had the necessary information to begin tackling the disease.

D A complicated approach was adopted, which made use of quinine - a drug obtained from tree bark which had long been used to combat fever, but was now seen as a crucial part of the war on malaria. Italy introduced a quinine law and a quinine tax in 1904, and the drug was administered to large numbers of rural workers. Despite its often terrible side effects, the drug was successful in limiting the spread of the disease, and in breaking cycles of infection. In addition, Italy setup rural health centres and invested heavily in education programmes. Malaria, as Snowden shows, was not just a medical problem, but a social and regional issue, and could only be defeated through multi-layered strategies.

E It was originally decided to give quinine to all those in vulnerable regions - even healthy people. However, peasants were often suspicious of medicine being forced upon them, and doctors were frequently met with hostility and stubborn refusal to accept the treatment offered. But despite the refusals, the strategy as a whole was hugely successful. Deaths from malaria fell by some 80% in the first decade of the 20th century and some areas escaped altogether from the scourge of the disease.

F The 1915-18 war delayed the campaign, as funds were diverted to the battlefields. In the 1920s and 1930s the draining of the damp, unhealthy marshlands around Rome had a certain impact on the spread of malaria. However, as war swept through the drained lands in the 1940s, the disease returned with a vengeance. Yet the country's leading malariologist Alberto Missiroli refused to order the distribution of quinine, so allowing the epidemic to spread unchecked. According to Snowden, he did this in order to create the ideal conditions for a new strategy, supported by the US Rockefeller Foundation - a massive experiment involving the extermination of mosquitoes with the chemical DDT. It is estimated that more than a third of the inhabitants in the affected area contracted malaria and countless thousands died.

G With the end of the war in 1945, the US government and the Rockefeller Foundation were free to experiment. DDT was sprayed from the air, and 3m Italians had their bodies covered with the chemical. The effects were immense, and by 1962 malaria was more or less gone from the whole country. One of the final victims to die of the disease in Italy was the popular cyclist, Fausto Coppi. He had contracted malaria in Africa in 1960, and the failure of doctors in Italy to spot the disease was a sign of the times. A few decades earlier, they would have immediately noticed the telltale signs; it was later claimed that a small dose of quinine would have saved his life.

H As there are still more than 1m deaths every year from malaria worldwide, Snowden's book also has contemporary relevance. This is a disease that affects every level of the societies where it is rampant. The economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s which made Italy into a modern industrial nation would not have been possible without the eradication of malaria. Moreover, this book convincingly argues that the disease was 'an integral part of the big picture of modern Italian history'. This magnificent study, beautifully written and impeccably documented, deserves an audience beyond specialists in history, or in Italy.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Images and Places

A new research method uses photography to try to explain why people form an attachment to certain places

A 27 Human beings naturally become attached to places they visit or inhabit and these emotional attachments have become increasingly important in research on recreation sites and activities. Research into this phenomenon is called 'sense-of-place research'. This research has employed a variety of approaches to gauge people's feelings toward a place, including surveys and personal interviews, but so far has not used photo-based methods. However, Visitor Employed Photography (VEP), used to capture visitor perceptions of landscape and recreational quality, represents a potential innovation in sense-of-place research.

B 28 A 'place' is a setting that we give meaning to based on the personal experiences, relationships and feelings we associate with it. A crucial distinction that needs to be made is between the more subjective concept of attachment and the symbolic 'meanings' or labels we use to describe the type of place a setting represents. Is, for example, a multiple-use forest area a wilderness? A playground? A workplace? Symbolic meanings are important in that they form the basis of our attachment to a place: we attribute meaning to our settings, and in turn become attached to the meanings (Stedman, 2003). All settings can have multiple meanings depending on how we encounter them. Some researchers suggest that, because meaning emerges through individual experience, for example 'my camping trip', place meanings are completely individualistic: a given setting such as a park will contain as many different meanings as there are people using the setting (Meinig, 1979). Others, however, (e.g. Grieder & Garkovich, 1994) assert that meanings are based on social categories and therefore are shared by others within these categories. For example, farmers share certain meanings for a plot of land that are distinct from those of real estate developers or hunters.

C 29 Clearly, place attachment is built through familiarity with a place over a period of months or even years. Relph (1976) describes sense-of-place attachment as the steady accumulation of events within a setting; this creates 'home places'. According to this view, those who have participated fully in the life of the home or community, or have accumulated a series of everyday events in a setting, will have the strongest attachment to it. Extended residence in a place tends to make us feel toward it almost as a living thing, affecting our emotions in the same way as a family would (Ryden, 1993). However, Tuan (1977) notes that a sense of place may also develop quite rapidly in 'chosen places', where dramatic landscapes and intense experiences can lead to an immediate attachment. Indeed, many settings, especially those that attract visitors, may simultaneously exist as home places and chosen places.

D 30 Clearly we are dealing with a complex phenomenon and photo-based research methods may help us to understand it better. In VEP, tourists are asked to take photographs. This technique has primarily been used to assess the perceptions of visitors to parks and recreation places. Haywood (1990) describes several benefits of VEP. Photography is an enjoyable, familiar activity to tourists which helps to sharpen observation and identify specific locations that are important. It can give clearer ideas on elements that are liked or disliked and also facilitates comparisons between places.

E 31 However, several methodological issues need to be taken into account. First, who should take the photographs? VEP research typically involves visitors or tourists but, when applied to questions of attachment to a community, this approach has potential pitfalls. Chenoweth (1984) notes that research subjects may take photos that represent only a part of their entire recreational experience. This tendency probably relates to unfamiliarity with the setting. For example, when researchers assign the task of photographing a travel route with which respondents are not familiar, participants may save too many pictures and then use them all up at the end of their visit, even if there is no suitable material. Markwell (1997) noted an opposite tendency in his study of pictures taken on a nature tour: beginnings of excursions were over-represented, due perhaps to the initial novelty of the trip. Furthermore, Haywood (1990) suggests that compressing the photo-taking period into a single day (as he did in his work) may result in an over-representation of tourist icons rather than ordinary places. In contrast, Yamashita (2002), when focusing on local residents' perceptions of the qualities of the water around them, noted that residents may have more difficulty expressing visual appeal than visitors, precisely because they are insiders and less conscious of aesthetic qualities. When addressing complex attachment to landscape, we would expect, however, that familiarity ought to increase the validity of the items selected to represent sources of attachment. We also expect that photographs taken by local residents will represent a wider range of phenomena than pictures taken by transient visitors.

F 32 But how should the photographs be interpreted? Goin (2001) notes that with every photo taken 'a fiction is created ... but presents to the uninformed an overwhelming conviction of fact' (p. 363). By implication, what photos appear to be and what they really represent may be very different things, and some follow-up helps to uncover the intended meanings of the participant. Yamashita (2002) notes the utility of asking respondents to provide descriptions of each photo in a notebook or diary. These elaborations are helpful, but in cases of complex phenomena, an interview may help participants clarify their intentions (Markwell, 1997).