【研究生学术英语读写教程翻译 中国科学院大学Unit6】

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Unit 6 Coincidental Killers

巧合杀手

In the late 17th century, the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek created a new type of microscope lens and brought an entire world of tiny organisms into focus.Looking at his own dental plaque, he wrote:“I then most always saw with great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving.” These little creatures were intriguing but seemingly unimportant,and few others picked up the baton from van Leeuwenhoek. That changed in the 19th century, when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch proved that some of these microbes were behind important diseases.

17世纪末，荷兰科学家安东尼·范·列文虎克创造了一种新型显微镜镜头，将整个微小生物的世界聚焦在焦点上。看着自己的牙菌斑，他写道：“然后我总是非常惊讶地看到，在所说的事情中，有许多非常小的活体动物，非常漂亮动人。”这些小生物很有趣，但看起来并不重要，很少有人从范·列文虎克手中接过接力棒。19世纪，当路易斯·巴斯德和罗伯特·科赫证明这些微生物中的一些是重要疾病的幕后黑手时，情况发生了变化。

That framing has stuck. Microbes are everywhere, but we take their presence on phones, keyboards, and toilet seats as a sign of filth and squalor. They fill our bodies, helping us to digest our food and safeguard our health, but we view them as adversaries to be drugged and conquered.

这种框架一直存在。微生物无处不在，但我们认为它们出现在手机、键盘和马桶座圈上是污秽和肮脏的标志。它们填满我们的身体，帮助我们消化食物，保护我们的健康，但我们认为它们是需要下药和征服的对手。

This antagonism is understandable. Aside from those of us with access to microscopes, most people will never see microbes with their own eyes. And so we tend to identify microbes with the disease-causing minority among them, the lttle buggers that trigger the tickling mist of a sneeze or the pustule on otherwise smooth skin. We become aware of their existence when they threaten our lives, and for much of our history, that threat was substantial. Epidemics of smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, and plague have traumatised humanity, and the fear of these diseases has contaminated our entire culture, from our religious rites to Hollywood films such as Contagion (2012) or Outbreak (1995).

这种对抗是可以理解的。除了我们这些可以使用显微镜的人之外，大多数人永远不会亲眼看到微生物。因此，我们倾向于将微生物与其中的少数致病微生物联系起来，这