A
Take a deep breath and drink some water for 15 seconds! This is just one of hundreds of tips you might get if you have the hiccups(打嗝). Hiccups are so mysterious that we really don’t know why they start and why they stop.
Everyone has a favorite cure for a case of the hiccups. Some people think that a good scare is necessary to get well. Others eat a teaspoon of sugar. Still others drink a glass of water with a knife in it.
An American man named Jack O’Leary claimed (声称) to have hiccupped 160 million times over a period of eight years. He tried 60,000 cures, but none of them worked. Finally he prayed to Saint Jude（圣徒犹大）, the saint of hopeless cases, and his hiccups stopped at once.
It took a British engineer eight months to cure his hiccups. People from all over the world wrote him letters with suggestions for getting well. He tried them all, but the hiccups continued. Finally, he drank a ‘secret’ mixture someone had sent him. By that evening his hiccups were gone.
Why did these cures work for these two men? No one really knows. But people who have studied many cases of hiccups have an idea. Hiccups usually go away if you believe in the cure.
1. If something is mysterious, it is ____.
A. hard to stop B. easy to hurt
C. hard to understand D. easy to take care of
2. Which cure is NOT mentioned in Paragraph 2?
A. A good scare. B. A special tool.
C. A teaspoon of sugar. D. A glass of water with a knife in it.
3. How many times did Jack O’Leary claim to have hiccupped over a period of eight years?
A. 8. B. 160. C. 60，000. D. 160，000，000.
4. The British engineer’s hiccups were cured by ____.
A. taking a spoonful of salt B. taking a deep breath
C. drinking a secret mixture D. drinking some water for 15 seconds
5. The passage is mainly about ____.
A. a British engineer’s hiccups B. what makes hiccups happen
C. Jack O’Leary’s hiccups D. different ways to stop hiccup
