Gujarat Board GSEB Class 11 English Textbook Solutions Snapshots Chapter 7 Birth Textbook Exercise Important Questions and Answers, Notes Pdf.
Gujarat Board Textbook Solutions Class 11 English Snapshots Chapter 7 Birth
GSEB Class 11 English Birth Text Book Questions and Answers
Reading with Insight
Question 1.
“I have done something; oh, God! I’ve done something real at last”. Why does Andrew say this? What does it mean?
Answer:
Andrew is a doctor and the primary duty of the doctor is to save life. When he is faced with a dilemma, he does not lose his balance and does what he is expected to do. He saves the mother first and, by his Herculean efforts, saves a nearly dead, stillborn baby boy. What he performed was nothing short of miracle. Doctor’s sense of satisfaction is truly justified.
Doctors are expected to do their duties as and when demanded. Andrew came home at midnight. He, surely, would have been tired but responded to the duty call when Joe Morgan asked him to come to his place. Morgan’s wife needed immediate help. Andrew performed his duties exceptionally well. That is why he says, “I have done something; oh God! I’ve done something real at last”.
Question 2.
“There lies a great difference between textbook medicine and the world of a practising physician.” Discuss.
Answer:
From time immemorial, we have been hearing that there is a lot of difference between theory and practice. This, indeed, is true. The theoretical information gathered from the book, sometime, does not provide solutions to all the problems. The medical textbook provides information about the treatment of various diseases but at times, the doctors face a dilemma which cannot be solved by any orthodox theory.
In the lesson ‘Birth’ Dr Andrews undergoes the same experience. When the mother and son both needed his attention, he had to make a decision. In this decision making, no medical textbook could have helped him. In this case, Dr Andrew acted instinctively. He first saved the mother and then the child. He treated the mother with the traditional treatment and the child with a mixture of traditional and intuitive treatment. The net result of both was success.
Question 3.
Do you know of any incident when someone has been brought back to life from the brink of death through medical help. Discuss medical procedures such as organ transplants and organ regeneration that are used to save human life.
Answer:
The progress in the field of medical science is astounding. Every day, new medicines are invented for various diseases, which make yesteryears treatment outdated and redundant. In fact, people say that after five years, the surgical procedure would be so advanced that today’s surgical instruments will be termed as ‘Butchers instruments’. Organ transplant is such a procedure, which speaks volumes about the radical advancement in medical science.
This progress turned out to be a real boon in my friend’s life. She suffered a renal failure. In spite of mammoth efforts, a matching donor could not be found. There was an appeal made for the donor in all the leading dailies and television, and the miracle happened-‘A perfect match was found. The doctors wasted no time and the kidney transplant took place. With God’s grace, my friend is leading healthy life. It happened almost fifteen years back’.
GSEB Class 11 English Birth Additional Important Questions and Answers
Answer the following questions in four to five sentences each:
Question 1.
Why was Andrew Manson called in? How did he react to the call of duty?
Answer:
Andrew Manson had just begun his medical practice in the small Welsh mining town of Blaenelly. He was called in to attend to Susan Morgan, who was expecting her first child after being married for nearly twenty years. Her husband, Joe Morgan had been waiting for an hour outside the closed surgery. It was nearly midnight when Andrew reached there. As Joe acquainted Andrew with his wife’s condition, Andrew forgot his own affairs.
He went inside his house for his bag and immediately left for the driller’s place. Since his services were not immediately needed by the expecting mother, he decided to wait downstairs. He re-examined her after an hour. It was at 3:30 am when the nurse summoned him. He struggled for an hour before the child was born. Then he worked feverishly to revive the weak mother and the stillborn child. He had to use all his knowledge and experience in discharging his duty. He did not pay attention to his own physical tiredness or mental tension. Duty came first and he responded to it with single-minded devotion.
Question 2.
Give a brief account of the efforts made by Andrew to revive the stillborn baby.
Answer:
A shiver of horror passed over Andrew as he gazed at the still form of the newborn baby. Though it was a perfectly formed boy, its limp warm body was white. The whiteness meant suffocation caused by lack of oxygen. Andrew remembered the treatment given to such a case in the Samaritan. Before the hot and cold water came he had asked for, he laid the child upon a blanket and gave it artificial respiration.
Then he dipped the child alternately in hot and cold water. Now, the child was quite slippery. He rubbed it with a rough towel. Then he pressed and released his chest till it heaved up. It was followed by other heaves. Andrew redoubled his efforts. The child started gasping. A bubble of mucus came from one tiny nostril. The pale skin turned pink. The limbs were no longer boneless. His head did not lie back spinelessly. The child gave a cry. It came alive.
Question 3.
Compare and contrast Andrew’s emotional, mental and physical state at the beginning of the story and at the end.
Answer:
At the beginning of the story, Andrew is physically tired and emotionally upset. He has just returned from a disappointing evening with Christine, the girl he loved. His thoughts are heavy and muddled. The episode he had witnessed at Cardiff station still filled his mind with sadness. Though he thought of marriage as a blissful state, he couldn’t help remembering the miserable failure of many marriages.
At the end of the story, Andrew is physically exhausted but emotionally cheerful and mentally alert. His mind is filled with joy and self-satisfaction. He has performed an unusual feat, no- less than a miracle. He calls upon God as witness that he has done something real at last. This sense of achievement helps him to overcome physical fatigue. His sense of duty towards his patients helps him to attend them wholeheartedly. He forgets his personal feelings and thinks only of reviving the patients.
Question 4.
What impression do you form of Andrew Manson on the basis of the story ‘Birth’?
Answer:
Andrew Manson is a young man who has recently qualified as a.doctor and started his medical practice as an assistant to Dr Edward Page in the small Welsh mining town of Blaenelly. He is in love with Christine and thinks of marriage as an idyllic state. His heart is overflowing with love. His steady mind and reason help him see the marriages of many persons as dismal failures.
Andrew is mature enough to keep his private and professional lives apart. Once confronted with his responsibility, he discharges his obligations to the utmost capacity. He is duty conscious. He is not a theorist only. He believes in practical approach. He is pragmatic and is not afraid to try unique methods. Andrew has a tender heart. He is aware of the feelings of others. He knows how deeply Susan loved her coming baby. He has polite manners and reassuring tone. On the whole, Andrew impresses us as a dedicated doctor.
Birth Summary in English
Birth Summary:
Summary of the story ‘Birth’ by A. J. Cronin begins with the protagonist Andrew Mason reaching Bryngower at nearly midnight, where, despite the Jate hours, Joe Morgan was waiting for him. Joe Morgan is shown to be impatient and anxious, pacing to and fro.
On seeing Andrew he had expressed a sense of relief. Joe, who was “burly driller” i.e., a mine worker was there to take Andrew to his house, was glad that Andrew had come and says that he had been waiting for him for the last one hour. He informs Andrew that his wife has started the process of labor and is before time too.
Andrew was feeling a bit detached today, he recalled what had earlier happened that evening with Christine, the girl he loves, and tried not that disappointment surface. He is generally very receptive to his surroundings, but today he was not bothered and was feeling very distant from them. Together with Joe, they were going to 12 Blaina Terrace to Joe’s house to his expecting wife. But the narrator says that Andrew had no idea that the night that was about to come would be different, let alone be a life-changing experience.
When both of them reached Joe’s house, Joe, with restraint, said that he would not go inside but he was confident of Andrew’s capabilities and had faith in him. Andrew saw a poorly furnished but a small and clean bedroom, up to a narrow stairwell. Inside the room, he saw Mrs Morgan’s mother, a tall, grey-haired woman of nearly seventy. Along with her was a stout’ elderly midwife who was waiting beside the patient and intently following Andrew’s expression.
Mrs Morgan’s mother offered to make Andrew a cup of tea. She knew it was not an ordeal that is going to span over short time, and she probably didn’t want the doctor to leave, and it was thus in the best interest to make his stay as comfortable as possible. Andrew was tired and he knew that if he went home he could steal an hour’s sleep but he chose to stay.
In the kitchen downstairs, he drank the tea which he got from Mrs Morgan’s mother. After an hour he went to check up on Mrs Morgan and came down again. Everything was stagnant except for the wood burning in the fireplace. And also the sound of Joe’s steps pacing around outside. Mrs Morgan’s mother who was sitting opposite to him was motionless, in her black dress and was continuously observing the doctor.
Andrew then began to contemplate about all those failures of relationships that was happening around, and how he was conflicted with the one he had. He was so engrossed in his thoughts that when he was addressed by the person sitting across him, he got started. Mrs Morgan’s mother told that Susann, i.e., Mrs Morgan would not like chloroform if it would harm the baby. They had their hearts set on this child and everyone was looking for it. Andrew gathered himself together and replied that the anaesthetic would not affect the baby and that both of them would be alright.
At half-past three the nurse called Andrew up, and it was a time that Andrew began with his work. After a long struggle, as dawn encroached upon them, a child was born, lifeless. The doctor was terrified. After all that hard work and promises that he made, he went numb out of ambiguity and exhaustion.
The doctor was torn between his two obligations, whether to resuscitate the child or to save the failing mother. His moral dilemma did not allow him to solve this problem with the conscious decision. With blind instinct, he first gave the child into the nurse’s custody and went on to tend to Susan whose health was deteriorating fast. The anaesthetic was clouding over the woman’s strength and after the doctor’s frantic efforts, he was able to somewhat stabilize the woman’s condition.
The doctor then turned towards the pale stiff child whom the midwife had placed beneath the bed. The pale whiteness which had spread over the tender body of the newborn made Andrew conclude that the child must be suffering from asphyxia or pallida, a condition caused by the lack of oxygen supply to the body. Andrew hastily tried to remember a similar case which he had witnessed at Samaritan and recalled its mode of treatment. He asked the midwife to bring him both bowls of hot and cold water, both.
The midwife rushed to the kitchen and complied to the doctor’s orders. Andrew then laid the child on a blanket and began a special method of respiration. The doctor then went on to submerge the child alternatively in each bowl. He continued the ordeal for over fifteen minutes without any positive reaction from the lifeless body of the child. A desperate sense of defeat was encroaching upon him but he refused to give up.
The midwife was watching the doctor’s actions in utter amazement. The doctor recalled the longing that Susan had for a child, that her mother had for a child and all that seemed futile to him now and beyond repair. The midwife begged him not to go„ on with this madness and to face the fact that the child is stillborn. But the doctor was determined not to let the efforts of the last half an hour in waste. As a last desperate effort, Andrew began rubbing the limp chest of the puny child with a rough towel, almost crushing it.
Then almost as if in a miracle, the child’s chest heaved and let out a tuft of breath. After all, that effort coming to fruition beneath his fingers made him ecstatic. Signs of life appeared in the still body of the child letting out a satisfying cry, calming all the madness around him. The nurse thanked God for this miracle and Andrew handed her the child. The room was a mess, and Susan was still in a trance. Her mother was still praying.
Then almost mechanically, Andrew left, saying that he will fetch his bag later. He went downstairs to the scullery and had a long drink of water, after which he went out to meet Joe. He informs that everything was alright. It was five in the morning and everything was gently coming to life.
The miners out of their night shifts were on the road. Tired and exhausted, Andrew walked along with them while in his mind all he could think was that at last, he has done something worthwhile. He had finally achieved the validation that he was striving for.