Perhaps the most difficult thing to come to terms with is the scale of death. influenza, for example, is an affliction which you no doubt have come across. however, you have never encountered anything like elizabe­than flu. it arrives in december 1557 and lasts for eighteen months. in the ten-month period august 1558 to may 1559 the annual death rate almost trebles to 7.2 percent (normally it is 2.5 percent). more than 150,000 people die from it—5 percent of the population. this is proportionally much worse than the great influenza pandemic of 1918–19 (0.53 percent mortality). another familiar disease is malaria, which elizabethans refer to as ague or fever. you might associate this with more tropical countries of the modern world but in marshy areas in sixteenth-century england, such as the lincolnshire and cambridgeshire fens, the norfolk broads, and romney marsh in kent, it kills thousands. –the time traveler's guide to elizabethan england, ian mortimer what is the central idea of this passage? large numbers of elizabethans died from illness and disease. elizabethans easily recovered from the spread of influenza. elizabethan influenza was much like the influenza of today. malaria was one disease that elizabethans faced.

Which two passages in this excerpt from the death of ivan illych does leo tolstoy use to suggest that ivan ilych feels like his life is slipping away from him? "what's the use? it makes no difference," he said to himself, staring with wide-open eyes into the darkness. "death. yes, death. and none of them knows or wishes to know it, and they have no pity for me. now they are playing." (he heard through the door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "it's all the same to them, but they will die too! fools! i first, and they later, but it will be the same for them. and now they are merry . . the beasts! " anger choked him and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable. "it is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this awful horror! " he raised himself. "something must be wrong. i must calm myself—must think it all over from the beginning." and he again began thinking. "yes, the beginning of my illness: i knocked my side, but i was still quite well that day and the next. it hurt a little, then rather more. i saw the doctors, then followed despondency and anguish, more doctors, and i drew nearer to the abyss. my strength grew less and i kept coming nearer and nearer, and now i have wasted away and there is no light in my eyes.