VOA常速英语2018--神奇博物馆呈现《哈利波特》既视感

For more than 140 years, from the late 1700s to the 1930s, the family-owned Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary 1 served customers with an amazing assortment 2 of medicines. When the shop closed, the building’s new owner kept it just the way it was, and turned it into a museum.

140多年来，即从18世纪晚期到20世纪30年代期间，由家族所有的Stabler-Leadbeater药商博物馆为顾客提供了各种各样的药物，让人惊喜不断。药店停业后，这座大楼的新主人保持了它的原貌，并将它打造成了博物馆。

A lot of the medicines that people would have been purchasing here were probably for minor 3, ailments 4, rashes, skin conditions, the flu, a headache. The apothecary museum contains thousands of items. They include bloodletting tools and cobalt glass bottles to store poisonous liquids. Like a modern drugstore, the apothecary sold more than just medicine. Lots of other chemicals like paints and dyes and perfumes would have been made and sold here.

人们来这里买的药一般都是针对小病的，比如皮疹、皮肤病、流感、头痛。这家博物馆里有上千件物品，包括采血工具和储存有毒液体的钴蓝色玻璃瓶。这里就像一家现代药店，卖的不只是药物而已。这里还有很多化学制品，比如油漆、染料和香水，这里都有生产和销售。

But other items like sewing machines and pens and razors and baby bottles were sold here as well. On the store’s original shelves are dozens of gold leaf labeled hand blown glass bottles for liquids. These bottles have probably been part of this pharmacies 5 collection since the 1850s. A number of them have traces of residue 6 from the ingredients. Others amazingly still contain liquids that go back decades, including cinnamon for nausea 7, iodine 8 and antiseptic and opium 9 which is derived 10 from the poppy flower.

但其他物品，比如缝纫机、笔、剃须刀和奶瓶，这里也有卖。这家店的货架跟以前一样，上面摆放着许多金标手吹玻璃瓶，用来储存液体。这些瓶子很可能自19世纪50年来开始就已经在这里了。其中很多物件上还残留着一些成分；还有一些瓶子竟然还储存着几十年前的液体，比如治疗晕船的肉桂、碘、消毒剂以及从罂粟花中提取的鸦片。

Opium was a very effective painkiller 11, and it would often be used to treat the flu or dysentery. The upstairs room looks like something out of a Harry 12 Potter movie with its old wooden boxes and drawers for storing herbs and other botanicals. Aconite or wolfsbane was a topical pain reliever. But in the wizardly world, the plant helps control violence by werewolves during their full moon transformations 13. So if you have more wolf trouble, it gets you through to the next full moon, but the practical use was for gout and joint 14 pain. And then there’s dragon’s blood used for making potions in the Potter series, but Dragon’s Blood actually comes from a tree whose red resin 15 was mostly used as a varnish 16. These dried wild carrot tops help reduce inflammation. Which looks surprisingly, probably like they would have looked like when they were originally packaged and sent. This visitor from California is intrigued 17 by the variety of plants which include cannabis, the marijuana plant. Using all these different herbs and, like, you know, plant-based medicines, that are like coming back now and like people are, you know, more into the holistic 18. So for me that’s personally most interesting to me because I work in the cannabis industry. While some medicines were discarded after it was known they were toxic 19, we still rely on others for today’s modern remedies.

鸦片止痛有奇效，也经常用于治疗流感或痢疾。楼上的房间看起来就像是电影《哈利波特》里的房间——里面有古老的木制箱子，有存放草药等植物萃取物的抽屉。乌头或狼毒可用于局部止痛。不过，在魔法世界里，这种植物可以用来控制狼人在满月期间变身时出现的狂暴情绪。所以，如果您有狼人变身的烦恼，这种植物可以帮您安然度过，直到下一个满月。不过它的实际用途是治疗痛风和关节疼痛。此外，还有龙血，在《哈利波特》系列电影里可用于制作魔水，不过龙血实际上来自于一种树，这种树的红色树脂主要用作清漆。这些干燥的野生胡萝卜头有助于缓解炎症。令人惊讶的是，它们跟当初打包好送走的时候一模一样。这位来自加州的游客为这五花八门的植物而着迷，比如大麻类植物。所有这些不同草药和植物制成药物的使用，仿佛重回人们的生活，融入了人们的生活一样。对我本人来说就是最有吸引力的，因为我就是做大麻行业的。虽然人们在发现有些药物有毒后就弃之不用了，但还有一些是我们赖以依靠的现代治疗方法。