McGraw-Hill Education 6 NLN PAX-RN Practice Tests by Joseph Brennan

Author:Joseph Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw Hill LLC
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

PASSAGE 1

In the Civil War, the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee is remembered as one of the bloodiest. Horrible hand-to-hand combat in a swamp resulted in 20,000 casualties. Both sides were equally affected. Each army had around 1,700 killed and 8,000 wounded. So many bodies covered the battlefield that the primitive medical staffs were overwhelmed. It took days to get to the injured. They lay in the mud as it rained and grew cold in a brisk April of 1862. The danger of infection, particularly gangrene, forced doctors of that day to amputate rather than disinfect. Yet the Shiloh killing fields became unique and what seemed to be a legend was born. As the soldiers lay in the mud puddles and muck moaning and waiting for a cruel death, their open wounds began to glow blue. As night came, witnesses reported seeing dots of greenish-blue light all over the area. The soldiers called it “angel’s glow.”

This phenomenon was well recorded because the doctors and nurses who eventually treated the wounded reported that a miracle had happened. Soldiers with the blue angel’s glow were not dying. In fact, they were recovering much faster than others who didn’t glow. They weren’t becoming angels. They were instead becoming healthy. The angel’s glow was some sort of gift of life. Soldiers were not that infected, but no one could explain why.

One hundred and fifty years later, in 2001, a high school student named Bill Martin came to Shiloh. He was a Civil War history buff, and when he heard the story of the mysterious angel glow, it sounded familiar. Bill’s mother was a microbiologist at the USDA. She had told him about certain bacteria that were bioluminescent, which meant they could produce their own light. On his own, he and a friend did some research. For their school science fair, they presented their theory. They discovered that Photorhabdus luminescens is a bacteria that gives off a blue-green glow. It lives inside of nematodes, which are worms that are parasites. They invade the larvae of insects, where they vomit out the bacteria, which produces chemicals that kill the larvae and other microorganisms. Bill’s theory was that the nematodes crawled into the open wounds and the “good” glowing bacteria killed off any “bad” bacteria that could cause infection. Yet there was one flaw in their theory: the “good” glowing type couldn’t live inside the warmth of the human body.

It turns out that hypothermia saved these men’s lives. The cold, damp swamp lowered their body temperatures, allowing the glowing bacteria to thrive. Once they got to the hospital, their bodies warmed up and killed off the glowing bacteria. Bill Martin solved the mystery, proving, as scientists have long known, that not all bacteria make us sick; some actually save lives.

17. The most important information this passage contains is about

a. how bacteria can heal disease.

b. a Civil War battle at Shiloh.

c. explaining a phenomenon.

d. a high school science fair.

18. Why was the blue light called angel’s glow?

a. It was assumed that sacred intervention was happening.

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