Questions 39-40 The word placebo refers to a fake medication, one that contains no active ingredients, or a medical procedure that patients believe will help them and then, as a result of that expectation, it does. 39 If a pill, for example, looks like a genuine medicine, the person taking it is likely to believe it contains medicine. It has also been found that patients think larger pills contain larger doses of medicine, and thus must be more effective. Similarly, it has been demonstrated that taking two pills has a greater therapeutic effect than taking only one. In a similar manner, the nocebo effect is based on the power of suggestion or expectation. If a patient has been told that a medication is likely to cause an unfavorable side effect such as dizziness or headache, he or she is more likely to experience one. It can present doctors with an ethical dilemma. 40 Doctors therefore wonder if they should inform patients of these rare occurrences, knowing the power of suggestion could interfere with the more likely positive effects of a necessary medication, depriving patients of an effective treatment.

(A) What are the implications of its effects for medical practice?

(B) An important determiner of its effectiveness is the doctor-patient relationship.

(C) When given a non-alcoholic beverage that subjects were told was beer, they believed and acted as if they were drunk.

(D) Adverse reactions to particular medications are typically experienced by a very small percentage of patients.

(E) It has been shown repeatedly that certain factors increase its effectiveness.

V. Reading Comprehension: Choose the best answer to each question/statement below according to what is stated and implied in each passage. Questions 41-45

  In seeking to describe the origins of theater, one must rely primarily on speculation, since there is little concrete evidence on which to draw. The most widely accepted theory, championed by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, envisions theater as emerging out of myth and ritual. The process perceived by these anthropologists may be summarized briefly. During the early stages of its development, a society becomes aware of forces that appear to influence or control its food supply and well-being. Having little understanding of natural causes, it attributes both desirable and undesirable occurrences to supernatural or magical forces, and it searches for means to win the favor of these forces. Perceiving an apparent connection between certain actions performed by the group and the result it desires, the group repeats, refines and formalizes those actions into fixed ceremonies, or rituals.

   Stories (myths) may then grow up around a ritual. Frequently the myths include representatives of those supernatural forces that the rites celebrate or hope to influence. Performers may wear costumes and masks to represent the mythical characters or supernatural forces in the rituals or in accompanying celebrations. As a people becomes more sophisticated, its conceptions of supernatural forces and causal relationships may change. As a result, it may abandon or modify some rites. But the myths that have grown up around the rites may continue as part of the group’s oral tradition and may even come to be acted out under conditions divorced from these rites. When this occurs, the first step has been taken toward theater as an autonomous activity, and thereafter entertainment and aesthetic values may gradually replace the former mystical and socially efficacious concerns.

  Although origin in ritual has long been the most popular, it is by no means the only theory about how the theater came into being. Storytelling has been proposed as one alternative. Under this theory, relating and listening to stories are seen as fundamental human pleasures. Thus, the recalling of an event (a hunt, battle, or other feat) is elaborated through the narrator’s pantomime and impersonation and eventually through each role being assumed by a different person.