 A Washington doctor warned that he has seen three children complain of headaches caused by the physical stress of relentlessly plowing through the epic 870-page adventure.
Call them Hogwarts headaches, named after the wizard school that Harry attends. Dr. Howard Bennett of George Washington University Medical Centre wrote in a letter to this week's New England Journal of Medicine that the three children, ages 8 to 10, experienced a dull headache for two or three days. Each had spent many hours reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." After ruling out other potential causes, Bennett told his patients to give their eyes a rest. But the spell cast by the book was clearly too powerful. "The obvious cure for this malady -- that is, taking a break from reading -- was rejected by two of the patients," Bennett said, adding that the children took acetaminophen instead. In each case, the headache went away only after the patient turned the final page. "Order of the Phoenix," the fifth book in the series, has nearly three times as many pages as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the first book, and Rowling still plans two more tomes. "If this escalation continues as Rowling concludes the saga, there may be an epidemic of Hogwarts headaches in the years to come," Bennett predicted. (Agencies)
| 華盛頓的一名醫生警告說他已經發現有三個孩子抱怨因為埋頭苦讀長達870頁的冒險小說，承受了很大的壓力而感到頭疼。 這種頭疼被稱為霍格沃茨頭疼，以哈利波特所在的魔法學校的名字命名。 喬治華盛頓大學醫療中心的霍華德·貝內特博士給本周出版的新英格蘭醫學雜志寫了一封信，信中說三個年齡從8到10歲的孩子感覺到輕微頭疼，持續了兩到三天。 每個孩子都花費了好幾個小時來閱讀《哈利波特和鳳凰社》。 在排除了其他可能造成頭疼的原因后，貝內特要求他的病人讓眼睛好好休息一下，但是這本書的魔力實在是太強大了。 貝內特說：“停止閱讀，休息一會是這種病最簡單的治療方法，但是有兩個病人拒絕這種療法。”他補充說那兩個孩子情愿吃撲熱息痛。 在每個病例中，只有當病人翻完最后一頁后，頭疼才會消失。 《哈利波特和鳳凰社》是該系列叢書中的第五本，這本書的頁數幾乎是第一本《哈利波特與魔法石》的三倍。羅琳仍在計劃另外兩本大部頭的書。 貝內特預測說：“如果這種頁數不斷增加的趨勢繼續下去直到羅琳結束這部傳奇故事的話，在以后的幾年中霍格沃茨頭疼可能會成為一種流行病。”。 （中國日報網站譯）
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Updated: 2003-11-03 01:00
