THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 183 



Metric System ; and from the said istday of July, 1902, the Metric System 

 of weights and measures shall be the legal standard of weights and meas- 

 ures recognized in the United States." The main feature of these bills is 

 compulsory use by the Government, which it is thought will result in 

 accelerated voluntary use by the people. For years the various heads of 

 departments have expressed themselves in favor of such a law. 



It seems desirable to examine briefly the results at the present time to 

 ascertain whether permissive legislation alone — as shown by a 34 years' 

 experiment — is sufficient, or whether we need a compulsory law. A brief 

 statement will be made of the chief industries in which the Metric System 

 has been employed and the extent of its use, so far as it has been possible 

 to ascertain. 



It is impossible to state to what extent the system is taught in gram- 

 mar SCHOOLS side by side with "compound numbers." In science teach- 

 ing — particularly in physics and chemistry, as taught in high schools, 

 academies and colleges, medical and technological schools — the new sys- 

 tem has wholly supplanted the old. Our college text-books of physics 

 and chemistry first adopted the Metric System for their experimental work 

 during the years from i860- 1870. High School texts followed, though 

 nearly 20 years later, the first one to make the change being in 1878. Not a 

 single text-book of any scope in these subjects now uses anything but this 

 International System, and probably not a school where science is studied 

 employs the old system. This alone is a tremendous advance in a quarter 

 of a century. 



The system has been adopted in metallurgy, assaying, pharmacy, elec- 

 tricity, biology, and to some extent in coinage and medicine. The basis 

 of micrometer measurements under the microscope, as, for example, in 

 bacteriological work, in the y^jVo of a millimeter ; for finer work, t^qV^jf 

 of a millimeter, the English divisions never being employed. While 

 medical and pharmaceutical schools* have long employed the decimal scale 

 in general chemistry and analysis, prescriptions have until lately been 

 written in grains, scruples and drams. A change is rapidly coming. One 

 large drug firm says that now half its prescriptions are written in metric 

 terms, and the number is on the increase. Another firm says fully three- 

 quarters are thus written ; in small cities it is not more than ten per cent. 

 This change is due mainly to the fact that the 1890 United States Phar- 

 macopoeia, issued in 1893, adopted exclusively the Metric System. It 

 seems certain that all medical schools and colleges of pharmacy will soon 

 follow, and that the English System will become obsolete with the pro- 

 fession except among the older physicians. 



A few wholesale dealers and manufacturers of drugs and chemicals em- 



* The New York College of Pharmacy uses the metric system exclusively ; all sys. 

 terns are taught. — [Ed.] 



