Before the Pain Stopped

C2 Proficiency · Word Formation · Cambridge Ready original exercise

For questions 1–8, read the text below. Use the word given in capitals at the end of some of the lines to form a word that fits in the gap in the same line. There is an example at the beginning (0).

BREATH

UNDERSTAND

DEMONSTRATE

BELIEVE

ADOPT

DIVINE

CONSCIOUS

FOUND

Before the mid-nineteenth century, surgery was a test of (0) ___ for patient and surgeon alike. Lacking any reliable means of dulling pain, surgeons prized speed above all else, and the most celebrated among them could remove a limb with (1) ___ rapidity. Patients, held down by assistants, frequently died of shock, and many sufferers, (2) ___ , preferred to take their chances with disease rather than face the knife. When the first public (3) ___ of ether anaesthesia took place in 1846, it was greeted first with (4) ___ , then with jubilation. Within months, the technique had crossed the Atlantic, although its (5) ___ was by no means without controversy. Some clergymen argued that pain was (6) ___ ordained and should not be interfered with, while certain doctors feared that patients rendered (7) ___ by the new gases might never wake. Their fears were not entirely (8) ___ , for early anaesthetics were administered with little understanding of safe doses, and fatalities, though rare, did occur. It would be decades before the practice could be called truly safe.

Before the Pain Stopped

ENDURE

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