PASSAGE 3 CBSE CLASS 12 ENGLISH

                             PASSAGE 3

1. The therapeutic value and healing powers of plants were demonstrated to me when I was a boy of about ten. I had developed an acute persistent abdominal pain that did not respond readily to hospital medication. My mother had taken me to the city’s central hospital on several occasions, where different drugs were tried on me. In total desperation, she took me to Egya Mensa, a well-known herbalist in my home town in the Western province of Ghana. This man was well-known to the medical doctors at the hospital. He had earned the reputation of offering excellent help when they were confronted with difficult cases where Western medicine had failed to effect a cure.
2. After a brief interview, not very different from the clinics of medical practitioners in the United States, he left us waiting in his consulting room while he went out to the field. He returned with several leaves and the bark of a tree and one of his attendants immediately prepared a decoction. I was given a glass of this preparation. It tasted extremely bitter, but within an hour or so I began to feel relieved. The rest of the decoction was put in two large bottles so that I could take doses periodically. Within around three days, the frequent abdominal pains stopped and I recall gaining a good appetite.
3. My experience may sound unusual to those who come from urban areas of the developed world, but for those in the less affluent nations, such experiences are a common occurrence. In fact, demographic studies by various National Governments and intergovernmental organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) indicate that for 75 to 90% of the rural population of the world, the herbalist is the only person who handless their medical problems.
4. In African culture, traditional medical practitioners are always considered to be influential spiritual leaders as well, using magic and religion along with medicines. Illness is handled with the individual’s hidden spiritual powers and with the application of plants that have been found especially to contain healing powers.
5. Over the years, I have come to distinguish three types of medicinal practitioners in African societies and to classify the extent to which each uses medicinal plants. The first group is the herbalist, who generally enjoys the prestige and reputation of being the real traditional medical professional. The second group represents the divine healers. They are fetish priests whose practice depends upon their purported supernatural powers of diagnosis. The third group represents the witch doctors, the practitioners who are credited with the ability to intercept the evil deeds of a witch.
6. All three kinds of practitioners have managed to keep the rural and urban populations in reasonable health. The practitioners have done well by relying almost exclusively on herbs for actual treatment, while serving as the people’s spiritual leaders and psychologists.
7. From the drug stores in New Delhi, I picked up some well-packaged bark and roots of Rauwolfia serpentina, a plant that was very well known in ancient Asiatic medicine. The storekeeper said that it cures hypertension. This plant has the power to lower the blood pressure and pulse. It is used to calm down mad people because alkaloids in the plant have a pacifying influence on the mind.
8. In the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, at the Royal Drug Research Laboratory, an impressive programme of medicinal plant research is being conducted.
9. The People’s Republic of China is perhaps the leading country in systematically amalgamating herbal medicine into natural healthcare systems. On the outskirts of Beijing, there is an experimental plantation of the Institute of Materia Medica.
10. For health, social and economic reasons, it seems clear that developing countries should begin an extensive programme aimed at an examination of the most important medicinal plants. In most of the countries, the information on such plants is dispersed and unorganised. Much of it is in the heads of herbalists, who represent a dying breed. The approaches of these traditional healers should not be overlooked or described as simplistic

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                             QUESTIONS

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1. On the basis of your reading of the passage, answer the following questions by choosing the most appropriate option.

(i) Which one of the following is not a type of medicinal practitioner in African societies, as per the author?
(a) Witch doctor                      (b) Herbalist                        (c) Divine healer                     (d) None of these
Uif in w\v\cYv of the ioWomrvq countries is research being conducted in medicinal plants, as per the passage?
(a) India                                (b) Ghana                           (pi Uepa\                                (hi NWoUhese

1. Answer the following questions as briefly as possible.

(i) Why did the author’s mother take him to Egya Mensa?
(ii) What did Egya Mensa do to make some medicine for the author’s ailment?
iii) What do the WHO demographic studies indicate?

• What is the status of traditional medical practitioners in African culture?
• What are the uses of Rauwolfia serpentina, according to the storekeeper of the drugstore in New Delhi?
• What does the writer suggest to preserve this system of healing with plants?

1. Find the words in the given passage which convey the meaning similar to

• Often repeated     (para 1)
• Joining                  (para 9)

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