l82 THE JOURNAIv OF PHARMACOIvOGY. 



has received the approbation of the State Council, and soon we expect 

 this vast empire of over 100,000,000 people to use the international system 

 exclusively, for in that country it takes but a short time for a " bill " to 

 become " law." Then there will be left only the United States and Great 

 Britain, with her possessions using an antiquated time-wasting system. 



In our own country, one of the many interesting attempts at a Decimal 

 Scale was made in 1857 by a joint special committee of the Chamber of 

 Commerce of New York and the American Geographical and Statistical 

 Society. After denouncing the French system as being atheistic in its 

 origin, and as requiring a knowledge of Latin and Greek and the acquisi- 

 tion of a " noisy vocabulary," this committee proposed to have Congress 

 adopt a Decimal System with English names. These names were never 

 written in Uncle Sam's Statute Books. The first legislation by Congress 

 was July 28, 1866, an Act which legalized Metric Weights and Measures, 

 but did not make their use compulsory. It is the only important Act ever 

 passed on the subject by the national legislative body. Thus the three 

 conservative countries— Russia, England, and United States— are believers 

 in the international system to the extent of allowing its use, if their citi- 

 zens elect to use it, and the tendency in the two former countries is rapidly 

 towards its exclusive use. In 36 nations the Metric System is now the 

 standard. In three, its use is permissive, in no civilized country is it pro- 

 hibited, and in every one there is some enactment regarding the system. 

 Every decade its use more nearly approaches the exclusive, and no in- 

 stance is recorded of a nation's going back to the old system after once 

 adopting the new. According to the report of the Decimal Association 

 of England, 189S, there are 448,000,000 people who use the system with 

 at least theoretical exclusiveness. 



Though our Congress has never passed any measure on the subject more 

 radical than the permissive Act of 1866, bills have been reported for sev- 

 eral years by the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures, who have 

 used the most cogent arguments in favor of passing a law requiring Gov- 

 ernment use of the system in all its transactions with the people, such as 

 in custom houses, but Congress has not yet complied. Two such bills 

 were reported at the last Session of Congress, and are now in Committee. 

 They are almost identical, except as to the date assigned for adoption of 

 the system. One of these will be reported at the next Session of Congress, 

 with possible change of dates, and the members of the Committee express 

 hope of its passage at that time. The first one, H. R. 104, introduced by 

 Rep. Uttauer, December 4, 1899, is as follows : " Be it enacted, etc. That 

 from and after the ist of July, 1902, all the Departments of the Govern- 

 ment of the United States, in the transaction of all business requiring the 

 use of weights and measurement, except in completing the survey of pub- 

 lic lands, shall employ and use only the weights and measures of the 



