Select the correct text in the passage. In the following excerpt, the author's purpose is to inform his readers about what he has discovered about cholera and to argue that the disease
spreads in a specific way. Which three details shape and refine the central idea of the text?
On the Mode of Communication of Cholera
by John Snow (excerpt)
It used to be generally assumed, that if cholera were a catching or communicable disease, it must spread by effluvia given off from the patient
into the surrounding air, and inhaled by others into the lungs. This assumption led to very conflicting opinions respecting the disease. A little
reflection shows, however, that we have no right thus to limit the way in which a disease may be propagated, for the communicable diseases of
which we have a correct knowledge spread in very different manners.
Pathology Indicates Manner of Communication
A consideration of the pathology of cholera is capable of indicating to us the manner in which the disease is communicated. If it were ushered in
by fever, or any other general constitutional disorder, then we should be furnished with no clue to the way in which the morbid poison enters
the system; whether, for instance, by the alimentary canal, by the lungs, or in some other manner, but should be left to determine this point by
circumstances unconnected with the pathology of the disease. But from all that I have been able to learn of cholera, both from my own
observations and the descriptions of others, I conclude that cholera invariably commences with the affection of the alimentary canal. The
disease often proceeds with so little feeling of general illness, that the patient does not consider himself in danger, or even apply for advice, till
the malady is far advanced.
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