IPMAT Indore 2022 · Verbal Ability · RC passage 2: Passage 2 – Edward Jenner and the first vaccinations

Step 1 — read the sentence in context. Paragraph 4:

“The child was in a run-down condition, and the vaccine material might very well have provoked a rather serious local reaction. In a way, the fate of vaccination hung in the balance and good luck was in its favour.”

Step 2 — note the two clues.

The subject is the child’s physical state (“run-down condition”), not public opinion.

The outcome is framed as a danger narrowly avoided — “hung in the balance”, “good luck” — so the reaction would have been harmful.

In medicine, a local reaction is an adverse response at the site of an injection (swelling, inflammation, ulceration), as opposed to a systemic one. That is option (a).

Why the others fail:

(b) Reads local as geographical. But protests by local people would not depend on the child being run-down, and would not be averted by “good luck” in a clinical sense.

(c) and (d) are encouraging reactions. The passage’s whole framing is of a risk, so a positive reading contradicts “hung in the balance”.

Answer: Option 1

Shortcut. Split the options by polarity first. Two are adverse, two are encouraging — and “the fate of vaccination hung in the balance” is unambiguously about danger. That halves the field in one reading.

Between the two adverse options, the deciding word is in the previous clause: the child was run-down, so the reaction belongs to the child’s body, not to the neighbourhood.

This is the standard method for vocabulary-in-context items: polarity first, then subject. You rarely need the word’s technical definition.

Where the passage says it. The final paragraph:

“Fortunately, only a few colleagues were so illogical, and an excellent idea of how much Jenner’s discovery was appreciated by his contemporaries may be obtained from the number of honours, diplomas, addresses and communications… Most of the prominent medical and scientific societies of Europe elected him a member.”

If only a few were illogical, the majority recognised the work’s value — which is the cause of the honours. Option (b) states that cause.

Why option (a) is the subtle trap. It quotes the passage almost word for word, but it names the absence of opposition rather than the presence of appreciation. Few people objecting does not, by itself, generate honours and memberships; positive recognition does. The passage makes the appreciation explicit (“appreciated by his contemporaries”), and that is the operative reason.

Why the others fail:

(c) Dr. Watt blamed the vaccine for measles deaths, but the passage never says he failed to prove it, nor links that to Jenner’s honours.

(d) “Tokenism” is a hostile reading. The passage lists the honours as evidence of genuine esteem; it even calls them “some special token of recognition” in a plainly positive sense.

Answer: Option 2

Shortcut. When two options both echo the text, prefer the one that supplies a cause, not a condition. Option (a) describes the backdrop (few objectors); option (b) describes the engine (colleagues recognised the work).

Option (d) can be eliminated on tone alone. The last paragraph is wholly admiring — “excellent idea of how much Jenner’s discovery was appreciated” — so an option attributing empty gestures to the societies contradicts the passage’s own evaluation.

Step 1 — trace the arc. Jenner’s first test works; he records 23 cases; he fails for three months in London; Cline’s trial succeeds on a frail child who might easily have reacted badly; opposition forms; recognition eventually arrives.

Step 2 — find the author’s own evaluative sentence. Paragraph 4:

“In a way, the fate of vaccination hung in the balance and good luck was in its favour.”

That is the author stepping back to comment, and it names both risk and chance — exactly option (d).

Why the others fail:

(a) London is where Jenner failed to find volunteers; the decisive trial happened through Cline afterwards. If anything the passage undercuts this.

(b) Documentation appears (the 23 cases, the pamphlet), but as one episode. It is a detail, not the thread running through the whole passage.

(c) Opposition is described in paragraph 5, but the passage reports it rather than exploring its causes — and that paragraph is one of six.

Answer: Option 4

Shortcut. Find the one sentence where the narrator editorialises. The passage is otherwise plain reportage of dates, names and cases; “the fate of vaccination hung in the balance and good luck was in its favour” is the author’s own judgement — and main-idea answers sit in exactly such sentences.

Then apply the scope test. Options (b) and (c) each cover a single paragraph; (a) misreads one. Only (d) describes something visible across the whole narrative — the risky boy, the risky frail child, the lucky outcome.

Where the passage says it. Paragraph 3:

“He remained in London for nearly three months without being able to find anyone who would submit to vaccination. Jenner went back to Gloucestershire, disappointed.”

The obstacle was the absence of volunteers, which prevented further trials — option (b).

Why the others fail:

(a) and (c) both blame his friends. But the passage says the opposite: he “left the vaccine material with his friends”, and it was through those friends that Cline obtained it. Friends who hold your material for you have not rejected your findings.

(d) Recognition, rewards and patents are not mentioned at this point. Recognition does arrive, but in the final paragraph and much later; it is not the cause of this disappointment.

Answer: Option 2

Shortcut. The cause sits in the sentence immediately before the word “disappointed”. Read that one sentence and the answer is settled: nobody would submit to vaccination.

Two options can be dismissed by a single later fact: Jenner “left the vaccine material with his friends”, and they passed it to Cline. That cooperation is incompatible with friends who responded negatively or disagreed — so (a) and (c) both fall.

Whenever a question asks why someone felt something, look for the adjacent sentence rather than searching the whole passage.

Where the passage says it. Paragraph 2 states the purpose of the record explicitly:

“By 1798, Jenner had succeeded in demonstrating the protective quality of the cowpox virus against smallpox, by putting on record details of 23 cases… Jenner demonstrated conclusively that the cowpox protects the human constitution from the infection of smallpox.”

The objective was to show that cowpox protects against smallpox — another disease. That is option (a).

Why the others fail:

(b) His son’s inoculation is one case among the 23, mentioned as a detail. The purpose of the record was scientific demonstration, not a display of personal commitment.

(c) Accidental contraction among dairy workers describes how sixteen of the cases arose — the method of acquiring the sample, not the point being proved.

(d) Reverses the logic. The protection comes from cowpox infection, not from the occupation; working with animals merely made accidental exposure likely.

Answer: Option 1

Shortcut. The stem asks for an objective, so look for a purpose verb — “demonstrating”, “to show”, “to prove”. The passage supplies two in the same paragraph, both saying the same thing: cowpox protects against smallpox.

Options (b) and (c) are both true statements lifted from the passage, which is what makes them dangerous. But a true detail is not an objective. Separate what the record contained from what it was meant to prove — only the latter answers this question.

Where the passage says it. Paragraph 5 gives Ingenhouz’s charge in full:

“…proclaimed openly that it was a dangerous innovation, absolutely unjustifiable, and communicated a disease without protecting against any other.”

The clause after “unjustifiable” explains it: vaccination gives you a disease (communicates one) without protecting against another. Option (a) restates both halves — “made people sick” and “failed to provide general immunity”.

Why the others fail:

(b) Reads unjustifiable as a moral wrong done to test subjects. The passage’s own gloss is about efficacy, not ethics.

(c) Reads it as a legal complaint. No law or legal basis is mentioned anywhere in the passage.

(d) Overstates the scope. The charge is that vaccination communicated a disease to the person vaccinated, not that it spread an epidemic through a population.

Answer: Option 1

Shortcut. The passage defines the word for you in the same sentence. Whenever a question asks what a quoted term “meant”, read on to the clause immediately following — here “communicated a disease without protecting against any other”.

Then match both halves to an option. Option (a) is the only one that covers both the harm and the failure to protect; (d) captures the harm but inflates it, and (b) and (c) import meanings of unjustifiable that the passage does not use.

Beware the dictionary instinct. Unjustifiable suggests ethics or legality in ordinary use, which is exactly why (b) and (c) are there — but context, not the dictionary, defines a word in RC.