Read the following passage then answer the question. Wh…
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Reаd the fоllоwing pаssаge then answer the questiоn. When the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, in September 1620 on its historic journey to the New World, three of its 102 passengers were pregnant. The fate of the three pregnant women and their children illustrate the fears that early American women facing childbirth must have held for themselves as well as for their children's survival. One of the passengers, Elizabeth Hopkins, gave birth at sea to a baby boy she named Oceanus. Oceanus Hopkins died during the Pilgrims' first winter in Plymouth. Two weeks after Oceanus's birth, Mayflower passenger Susanna White bore her son, Peregrine, who lived into his eighties. The spring after the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth, passenger Mary Norris Allerton died giving birth to a stillborn baby. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nearly one and one-half percent of all births resulted in the death of the mother from exhaustion, infection, dehydration, or hemorrhage. Since the typical mother gave birth to between five and eight children in her lifetime, her chances of dying in childbirth ran as high as one in eight. Even when the mother survived childbirth, she had reason to be anxious about the fate of her child. In even the healthiest seventeenth-century communities, one in ten children died before the age of 5. Less healthy settlements say three out of ten children dying in their early years. This passage is made up mainly of...
Reаd the pаssаge and answer the questiоns that fоllоws. It is estimated that one in five Americans will suffer from some form of depression at some point in their lives, while one in 20 can expect to have a recurring depressive disorder that can significantly impact the quality of their day-to-day activities. Today, depression is diagnosed and, more often than not, treated medically with any number of prescriptions that strive to even out the highs and lows of bipolar disorders and the murky depths of chronic depression. However, prior to the 1970s, depression was neither diagnosed nor treated as a disease-it was perceived as more of a character flaw or weakness. Still, many sufferers of depression managed to find moderately effective ways to cope with their disease. One of the most famous examples is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's depression probably originated from so much loss at an early age. Before he was 10, he lost a favorite aunt and uncle, a newborn brother, and his mother. Lincoln was not close to his father, but he was unusually close to his older sister, who also died when Lincoln was barely 18. And it is difficult to imagine a presidency more difficult and prone to sorrow than that of Lincoln's. Consider the course of events. He was elected president as the most inexperienced man in the history of that office, and more than a third of Lincoln's constituents, primarily Southerners, refused to even acknowledge him as president. Almost immediately, the bloodiest war America has ever seen broke out, eventually claiming 680,000 lives. Lincoln was conversely vilified as either an incompetent coward of a bloodthirsty warmonger as general after general he had chosen failed to be effective. In the midst of the war, Lincoln's young son died, and his wife became temporarily insane. Add, to all this, debilitating insomnia and chronic digestive problems, and it is a wonder that Abraham Lincoln was ever able to rise above his depression at all. How did he do it? "He loved to laugh," one Lincoln biographer explains simply. Though the photographic images we have of Lincoln show a stern, even morose, man, his photographers often complained about Lincoln's inability to hold still for more than 15 seconds before bursting into peals of laughter over the seriousness of posing for a portrait. The image we see is a contrived graveness Lincoln forced himself to maintain for the 30 seconds of stillness needed for the exposure. And the closest to Lincoln claimed that despite his often sad eyes, he demeanor was generally one of mirth and genuine amusement. It was not uncommon for Lincoln to begin telling a humorous story (a pastime for which he was famous) and become so incapacitated with laughter that he could not finish. In particular, Lincoln loved making fun of himself, especially his rather homely looks. Once accused of being two-faced by a political rival, Lincoln responded, "If I had two faces, do you think I'd be wearing this one?" Although Lincoln's sense of humor could not eradicate his depression, it could help keep it at bay, allowing him to move through difficult times with a certain degree of calm optimism. Lincoln famously once said, "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be." In our modern era of depression diagnoses, many might debate this point. But for Abraham Lincoln in 1865, these words were a good dose of medicine. The sentence below is a statement of... "He was elected president as the most inexperienced man in the history of that office, and more than a third of Lincoln's constituents, primarily Southerners, refused to even acknowledge him as president."