密歇根新闻广播 156年的今天,阿尔伯特亲王去世

 

156 years ago this day, a husband died.

His grieving wife wore black from that day until her own death 40 years later.

That is the story of Britain's Queen Victoria and her husband, the Prince Consort¹ Albert.

University of Michigan medical historian and PBS contributor Dr. Howard Markel joined Stateside to answer questions that remain surrounding Albert's illness.

Listen above for the full conversation, or catch highlights below.

On clues that he might have been misdiagnosed

"For decades, the thought was he died of typhoid fever, and he may well have died of typhoid fever. Doctors have parsed² the incubation time, the illness, and so on and so forth³, and it does not seem unlikely. But then there was this notion, well the Prince couldn't possibly have drunk tainted⁴ water, and typhoid fever is salmonella. It's a GI infection, a gastrointestinal infection from eating food or water that is tainted with that microbe."

"He had one of the world's experts on typhoid fever, a man named William Jenner, who diagnosed typhoid and saw the rash — the classic rose-colored rash of typhoid fever — about eight days into his illness. Now, here's the interesting thing: when doctors are experts in a particular thing, they tend to see that particular thing all the time. You have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You have a typhoid expert, everything looks like typhoid."

"He could have had Crohn's disease, or ulcerative colitis, or some kind of malignancy of the GI tract⁵. His mother died of stomach cancer, for example."

On his treatment

"This is a common theme in medicine well into the 1950s and '60s in America, as well as in England and other places in the world, that the patient was not told about his or her illness because they might not be able to bear it. Now, imagine not telling somebody what they had and the ethical⁶ quandary⁷ that puts the physician or the nurses or the other caregivers in. And this was pro⁸ forma—this was the way it was done."

1 consort   

v.相伴；结交

参考例句：

• They went in consort two or three together.他们三三两两结伴前往。
• The nurses are instructed not to consort with their patients.护士得到指示不得与病人交往。

2 parsed   

v.从语法上描述或分析（词句等）( parse的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• You should never assume any of the scripts being parsed are valid. 你绝不能假设所有的脚本都正确的解释。 来自互联网
• All text in an XML document will be parsed by the parser. XML文档中的所有文本都会被解析器解析。 来自互联网

3 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

4 tainted   

adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏

参考例句：

• The administration was tainted with scandal. 丑闻使得政府声名狼藉。
• He was considered tainted by association with the corrupt regime. 他因与腐败政府有牵连而名誉受损。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 tract   

n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林)

参考例句：

• He owns a large tract of forest.他拥有一大片森林。
• He wrote a tract on this subject.他曾对此写了一篇短文。

6 ethical   

adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的

参考例句：

• It is necessary to get the youth to have a high ethical concept.必须使青年具有高度的道德观念。
• It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。

7 quandary   

n.困惑，进迟两难之境

参考例句：

• I was in a quandary about whether to go.我当时正犹豫到底去不去。
• I was put in a great quandary.我陷于进退两难的窘境。

8 pro   

n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者

参考例句：

• The two debating teams argued the question pro and con.辩论的两组从赞成与反对两方面辩这一问题。
• Are you pro or con nuclear disarmament?你是赞成还是反对核裁军？