Some question about the meaning of sentence

Question

1/It was during the same time that the communications revolution speeded up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading on through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures into the 20th-century world of the motor car and the airplane.

In this sentence what's the relationship of the verb "lead", the adverb "on”, the preposition "through" and the preposition "into"?

2/The painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension.

What does this mean?

Dose this sentence mean the painful deaths are dereliction of duty of doctors

Or mean if the doctor managed the patient incompetently so that the patient suffer a painful death, the doctor will be punished

Or mean the painful deaths which are caused by incompetent management should result in license suspension ?

I am confused about them and thank you for your help!

Lakshwadeep · Accepted Answer

"leading on through" in sentence 1 is a phrase that you can also use in the sense of a process that is being directed passed through something. The subject of the sentence is "communications revolution", and the revolution passed through various technologies (telephone, radio, etc.) from the old days (transport) into today. It's a hard phrase to explain, so maybe some examples will help you:

John lead the water through the net to collect the gold.

The CEO lead the company through bankruptcy into a time of wealth and expansion.

In your sentence's case the words like "telephone" and "railway" are not meant literally (leading on through the telephone), but instead they are meant to describe periods of times (leading on through the age of the telephone).

For sentence two, any of your three meanings would be correct since it was the doctors who managed the patients and they also are the ones who have licenses.

Avangi · Answer

copysnake1/It was during the same time that the communications revolution speeded up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading on through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures into the 20th-century world of the motor car and the airplane.

In this sentence what's the relationship of the verb "lead", the adverb "on”, the preposition "through" and the preposition "into"?

This is a continuing journey through time and invention. We follow a path which leads on and on, through valleys and into mountains. These are just typical words which are used to describe travels. The journey in this case is along the "path" which the revolution took. "Lead on." (imperative) "Take me wherever." The path is leading on to greener pastures. On our way, we pass through a swamp and a forest into a beautiful valley.

2/The painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension.

What does this mean?

Dose this sentence mean the painful deaths are dereliction of duty of doctors (Context? Where does it say "doctors"?) Yes!

Or mean if the doctor managed the patient incompetently so that the patient suffer a painful death, the doctor will be punished

Or mean the painful deaths which are caused by incompetent management should result in license suspension ?

There's no way to tell, without further context, exactly who is being accused of what. Different terms have different implications. "Negligence" can apply to anyone. "Malpractice" applies to doctors. "Mismanagement" obviously applies to administrators. "Dereliction of duty" usually applies to public officials, or military personnel. Hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors all must be licensed by the government.

I think all three of your proposed meanings apply to one degree or another. It's a bit of a chore to precisely sort out your questions so they can be answered with appropriate precision. There should be no pain. Somebody goofed. Somebody should pay.

I think in your example sentence, "managed" is used generically, and doesn't necessarily refer specifically to hospital management. BTW, "presumptively" is misused. The adjective is "presumptuous." The noun "presumptive" is quite common, but the adverb "presumptively" is quite rare, in my experience. I believe it's incorrectly used here as an adjective. (Maybe I'm wrong.) I don't know, maybe I'll hedge on that. Could you say, She is presumptively dead," as a substitute for "She is presumably dead."? Well, probably. "Presumably" is an adverb. Sorry about that. The adverb modifies the being verb. Strange. "She presumptively is dead." Don't think I've ever heard anything like that.

Avangi · Answer

Lakshwadeep John lead the water through the net to collect the gold.

The CEO lead the company through bankruptcy into a time of wealth and expansion. Hi,

I think in the OP, "to lead" is intransitive. There doesn't seem to be any object. The path leads [hikers] over the mountain. Without the "hikers," the verb is intransitive. Right? To use the present participle, "She took the path leading [hikers] over the mountain."

Best regards, - A.

Copysnake · Answer

sorry,here is the full artical
The Supreme Court's decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.

Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect, "a centuries-old moral principle holding that an action having two effects — a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen — is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.

Doctors have used that principle in recent years to justify using high doses of morphine to control terminally ill patients' pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient.

Nancy Dubler, director of , contends that the principle will shield doctors who "until now have very, very strongly insisted that they could not give patients sufficient mediation to control their pain if that might hasten death."

George Annas, chair of the health law department at , maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It's like surgery," he says. "We don't call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn't intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you're a physician, you can risk your patient's suicide as long as you don't intend their suicide."

On another level, many in the medical community acknowledge that the assisted-suicide debate has been fueled in part by the despair of patients for whom modern medicine has prolonged the physical agony of dying.

Just three weeks before the Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the undertreatment of pain and the aggressive use of "ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care.

The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life.

Annas says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. "Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering," to the extent that it constitutes "systematic patient abuse." He says medical licensing boards "must make it clear... that painful deaths are presumptively ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension."

Avangi · Answer

Thanks, Copysnake. Your author writes well, but seems careless about some ambiguities. (Perhaps to the medical community these things would be clear.)

I take the Annas quote at the end to mean that with the current level of pharmacological knowledge, there's no need for patients to suffer pain; that the failure by doctors to provide medication may be based on legal and ethical/moral objections; that lawyers must be enlisted to help formulate new legislation to remove these obstacles, and to force doctors to aleviate pain, under penalty of losing their licenses should they fail to do so. Although it's not stated specifically, I believe it's implied that the responsibility rests with the doctors, since only they can prescribe medication. "Management" here refers specifically to "management of death, with respect to pain." (My last quote is a rephrasing.)

- A.

Edit. Hey, what happened?? We seem to be in the wrong thread! I just noticed! I'll see if somebody can fix it.

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