596 
DECIMAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 
pharmaceutists in the three kingdoms will continue to make the liquor strictly 
P.B., and consequently, so long as the present work remains in force, samples 
of liquor containing serious impurities will be the rule and not the exception. 
[If Mr. Ekin expects to find in the B. P., or any other similar work, the 
means of detecting every possible impurity or foreign matter which might 
be sometimes contained in commercial drugs, he is, of course, likely to be 
disappointed; and if in making the medicines ordered in the Pharmacopoeia 
he considers himself justified in following the letter without reference to the 
obvious spirit of the instructions given, and wtihout the exercise of know¬ 
ledge and judgment otherwise acquired, he must have a strange notion of 
pharmaceutical ethics, w hich would no doubt justify the anticipated result 
alluded to in his concluding sentence. We hope, and believe, however, that 
neither he nor pharmaceutists generally have so little regard for their own 
reputation, and the interest of their profession, as such unwarranted conduct 
w T ould indicate.— Ed. Ph. Journ.] 
DECIMAL WEIGHTS AND MEASUBE$. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Dear Sir,—How'ever admirable an arena for political discussion the House of 
Commons may be, a debate on any subject, even remotely scientific, never fails 
to bring to the surface the substratum of technical ignorance for which so many 
of our legislators are conspicuously noted. When the Gas Bill was first, intro¬ 
duced, an hon. member scouted, as ridiculous, the idea of burning a light with¬ 
out a wick, and on Wednesday evening (May 13), during the debate on the 
decimalization of our weights and measures, Air. Beresford Hope complained 
that we shall be forced to use words of three or four syllables to intimate our 
wants to the butcher, grocer, etc., and jocularly instanced “a Liverpool boy 
asking for three decigrammes of lollypops in exchange for a dime,” which the 
‘ Times,’ in a leading article (May 15), gravely reproduces as “ not in the least 
an exaggeration of tiie fact,” ignoring the natural objection, the boy would un¬ 
doubtedly have to paying fivepence for 4*5 grains of baked sugar, and the utter 
insouciance of the street-boy, whether they weighed him an ounce or 28 grammes 
for his cent, provided he obtained an equivalent for his outlay. The objection 
to the “ long names of foreign origin ” is equally absurd. What are boys taught 
Latin and Greek for? Here at least they must utilize their knowledge of the 
classic numerals, despite Air. Lowe. One thing only is to be feared, the aboli¬ 
tion of our cumbrous system, and the substitution of the simple decimal calcu¬ 
lations of the new one will probably tend to lessen the calculative genius of our 
future statisticians. England’s great mathematicians have no doubt reaped the 
benefit of early initiation into the mysteries of cwts., qrs., lbs., carats, scruples, 
and grains. Again, the Euglish people who love monosyllables, will soon reduce 
(as indeed the French have) kilogrammes into simply kilos, etc. But the great 
advantage of the new system is, the approximation it bears to most of our own 
separate systems. A man asks for a pint of beer, he gets half a litre, nearly 
18 ounces; this trifling difference surely would not be the “ penal legacy left to 
a working man’s Parliament.” In provincial France it is as common as it is in 
England to ask for “a pint ( pinte) of wine,” “a pound (livre) of butter,” “an 
ounce (once) of pepper,” “ a quart (pot) of cider,” etc. The illegality consists not 
in asking in obsolete terms, but in supplying with obsolete, and consequently 
illegal, weights and measures. Iu matters pharmaceutical, the change could 
but operate for the advantage of both dispenser and prescriber. The calculation 
at present necessary to express the quantities ordered in a French prescription 
in English grains and ounces, is something enormous to the unhappy druggist 
