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Supercat Posted 10 years ago
Grammar
A history of?
A hospital has treated a certain disease. You say:
The hospital has a history of the treatment.
Here you don't especially say 'one' history, and you don't know how many times the hospital treated it. And the disease is not several, but only one.
How do you do for that 'a history of~'? Is using 'a' in it okay?
(I'm afraid if this is a nonsense question, though)
The hospital has a history of the treatment.
Here you don't especially say 'one' history, and you don't know how many times the hospital treated it. And the disease is not several, but only one.
How do you do for that 'a history of~'? Is using 'a' in it okay?
(I'm afraid if this is a nonsense question, though)
Top answer
Supercat The hospital has a history of the treatment. This doesn't sound quite right to me. You could say "The hospital has a history of treating the disease".
- Supercat The hospital has a history of the treatment.
- This doesn't sound quite right to me.
- You could say "The hospital has a history of treating the disease".
- Actually, "a history of" is often used for negative things rather than positive things, though it is not actually wrong to use it of positive things too.
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5 Answers
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SupercatThe hospital has a history of the treatment.This doesn't sound quite right to me. You could say "The hospital has a history of treating the disease". Actually, "a history of" is often used for negative things rather than positive things, though it is not actually wrong to use it of positive things too.
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Thank you. I understand the use of 'a history of treating the disease' is okay, although we have a positive/negative matter anyway.
We don't know or focus on how many times the hospital treated the disease, but probably you see the all treatments performed by the hospital as a sequence of events or experiments; thus I suppose you use 'a history of ~', not the history of or historie
We don't know or focus on how many times the hospital treated the disease, but probably you see the all treatments performed by the hospital as a sequence of events or experiments; thus I suppose you use 'a history of ~', not the history of or historie
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Well, I meant that 'the hospital has done/experienced' anyway, regardless that it has succeeded in it or not. Either way, is 'a history of~' okay?
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SupercatWell, I meant that 'the hospital has done/experienced' anyway, regardless that it has succeeded in it or not. Either way, is 'a history of~' okay?"The hospital has a history of treating the disease", assuming no further qualification, would normally be understood to refer to successful treatment (or as successful as could be expected).
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