【一句话翻译】鸦片（附原文）

【中译英】

在19世纪，罂粟在事物的（发展）进程中起到关键的作用，正如石油在我们这个世纪起到的作用一样：鸦片是国民经济的基础、常需药品、贸易中的基本物、诗歌中浪漫革命的推动力，甚至是引发战争的导火索。  

（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.