As protector of her family’s health, the pioneer woman confronted situations she never imagined before crossing the Mississippi. Few women came west prepared to deal with desert sunburn, rattlesnake bites, or arrow wounds. Even when doctors were available, they were often no more knowledgeable than their patients. And most patent medicines were no more reliable than the itinerant merchants who sold them.
In certain cases, a woman could draw upon the folk wisdom and remedies she had learned back home; Western mosquitoes, for example, proved to be as repelled by a paste of vinegar and salt as were their Eastern cousins. More often, however, a woman was guided only by her own ingenuity in concocting tonics, powders, poisons, and polishes from whatever she had at hand; salt made a passable toothpaste; gunpowder was applied to warts, and turpentine(松节油) to open cuts; goose grease, skunk oil, and the ever-present lard were basic liniments; medical teas and tonics were brewed from sunflower seeds and roots.
31. According to the passage, why were doctors in the west sometimes unable to help their patients?
32. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about patent medicines?
33. It can be inferred that most of the pioneers referred to in the passage were originally from where in the United States?
34. All of the following were mentioned in the passage as being encountered by the pioneers EXCEPT( ).
35. It can be inferred from the passage that in order to survive in the West, the pioneers had to be( ).