Photographs of the victims of assassination attempts, for
example, nearly always show someone cradling the victim's
head in their hands. Medically this is a somewhat dubious
procedure, but medical logic has no place here. This is
not a trained act of assistance; it is a more basic
response related to the primary parental care of a
helpless child. It is much too difficult for an untrained
person to pause and make a reasoned assessment of the
physical injuries the victim has sustained before taking
first-aid action. Instead, he will reach out and touch or
lift as a primary act of comfort, with no thought to the
further damage he may be causing. It is too painful to stand
by and coldly calculate the best steps to be taken. The
urge to make comforting body contact is overpowering, but
we have to face the fact that it can sometimes prove
fatal. Once, as a small boy, ignorant of what was
happening, I watched a man killed in this way. Following
an accident, his injured body was cradled in the loving
arms of anxious helpers who lifted him into a car to drive
him away. The loving act destroyed his life by pressing
his splintered ribs through his lungs. Had he been
"callously" left lying where he was until a stretcher
arrived, he might have lived. Such is the power of the
urge to make body contact when tragedy strikes, and this
applies to males and females equally, for disaster knows
no sex.
Desmond
Morris, Intimate Behaviour, 1973
(1)
............... are offered as witness to people's
irrational responses, based as they are on instinct rather
than reasoning?...
(a)
Examples... (b)
Victims... (c)
Photographs... (d)
Attempts... (e)
Assassinations...
(2)
Why does medical logic have no place here?... Because --
(a)
this is a dubious process... (b)
this is not a trained act of assistance... (c)
it is too difficult for an untrained person... (d)
the victim is given first aid... (e)
there is no time for a medical approach...
(3)
What will an untrained person do first just out of
instinct?
(a)
He will think about the damage he is likely to cause... (b)
He will stand by and coldly calculate what to do... (c)
He will pause and make a reasoned calculation of the
situation... (d)
He will leave the victim alone and call for the doctor... (e)
He will reach out, touch or lift the victim...
(4)
How did the anxious helpers happen to become partly --
though unknowingly -- responsible for the injured man's
death in the incident that the author remembers from his
childhood?...
(a)
By embracing him tightly, supposedly in order to comfort
him... (b)
By pressing his splintered ribs through his heart... (c)
By "callously" leaving him lying there till a
stretcher arrived... (d)
By putting him in a cradle of love... (e)
By causing the accident...
(5)
The injured man might have lived if --
(a)
the would-be helpers had not pressed his splintered ribs
through his heart... (b)
the helpers had embraced him, unconsciously thinking that
this would comfort him... (c)
they had "callously" left him lying there till a
stretcher arrived... (d)
they had put him into a cradle of love... (e)
disasters had affected males and females equally....
