【中譯英】
在19世紀,罌粟在事物的(發展)進程中起到關鍵的作用,正如石油在我們這個世紀起到的作用一樣:鴉片是國民經濟的基礎、常需藥品、貿易中的基本物、詩歌中浪漫革命的推動力,甚至是引發戰爭的導火索。
(from This is Your Mind on Plants, by Michael Pollan)
In the nineteenth century, the poppy played as crucial a role in the course of events as petroleum has played in our own century: opium was the basis of national economies, a staple of medicine, an essential item of trade, a spur to the Romantic revolution in poetry, even a casus belli.