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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. As cancer is imagined to be caused by repression, how was TB explained?
(a) Ravages of bitterness.
(b) Ravages of vexation.
(c) Ravages of resentment.
(d) Ravages of frustration.

2. As described in Chapter 1, what unnecessary practices might members of the household of a cancer patient subject the patient to?
(a) Sanitation practices.
(b) Sterilization practices.
(c) Decontamination practices.
(d) Disinfection practices.

3. When was streptomycin discovered?
(a) 1933.
(b) 1943.
(c) 1939.
(d) 1944.

4. What does contact with someone afflicted with a disease that appeares to be a mysterious malevolency feel like, as described in Chapter 1?
(a) Trespass.
(b) Encroachment.
(c) Breach.
(d) Infraction.

5. In Chapter 1, if a disease was treated as a mystery to be feared, how would it be felt to be?
(a) Pernicious.
(b) Infectious.
(c) Endemic.
(d) Contagious.

Short Answer Questions

1. When was Bernard de Gordon's Pratiqum published?

2. In Chapter 2, from what time did the modern fantasy about cancer begin to take shape?

3. What was Oliver Goldsmith trained as?

4. What was once prescribed to tuberculars as a therapy that is now believed to stave off cancer?

5. How does Sontag say people with cancer might be treated by relatives and friends?

Short Essay Questions

1. What passion did people think would given them cancer if not discharged, and what example is provided of that belief?

2. At the time the book was written, what did many people believe about cancer?

3. When and why was it possible to separate the definitions of cancer from TB?

4. How did the metaphor of TB provide for two contradictory applications?

5. What stages does cancer have and how does it progress?

6. How were metaphors of TB broken up in the twentieth century?

7. Why does Sontag believe that cancer patients were not told about their illness, but patients with cardiac disease were told about their condition?

8. How did the apperance of tuberculosis become a staple of nineteenth-century manners?

9. How did a character in The Magic Mountain explain symptoms of disease?

10. What did Karl Menninger observed about the word cancer?

(see the answer keys)

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