674 
PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
It seemed to him that a book partaking of that character could be compiled and 
made to sell; and even if it did not pay he should not attach much importance 
to that, for it might be circulated at the cost of any society that was willing 
to pay the necessary expenses. Such a book might be compiled containing all 
the formulae of the B. P., with the weights and measures ranged side by side 
according to both systems. He thought such a publication would be sought 
after by a great many people, especially by manufacturing chemists, and by all 
pharmacists who had much to do with the manufacture of their own prepara¬ 
tions. He attached a great deal of importance to the manner in which these mea¬ 
sures should be represented. He fancied there was only one way of doing that, 
and that was the way the French had adopted in their last Pharmacopoeia. 
Most of the members would recollect that they had devoted one chapter to ex¬ 
tracts from foreign Pharmacopoeias, and in these the weights were given in the 
ordinary way in their French names, and opposite to them in italics were put 
the weights of the respective countries. Then, as regarded practitioners, in 
the practical carrying out of this system, he suspected they would have to sug¬ 
gest some small companion, in the shape of a card or a table representing fairly 
the equivalents of this system. By these and other similar means, they would, 
in course of time, introduce a certain knowledge of the system amongst the 
public, and tend to bring about a spirit of inquiry which would probably result 
in a general adoption of the whole French system ; but it would be hopeless to 
expect that this could be done in a short time. It was well known that in 
many parts of France still the old weights were used. Any one who went into 
the markets of France on a market day would hear the old weights going, and 
some of them were quite as primitive as our three barleycorns to an inch, and 
all the rest of it. What they wanted was a system applicable to men of busi¬ 
ness and education, which would be easy of comprehension, whether it be in 
this country, America, in Russia, or in France. 
Professor Redwood said it might conduce to the discussion of this subject if 
he read a letter which had come into his hands that morning, which brought a 
new feature into the discussion. It had been sent to the editors of the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Journal by Mr. Thomas Lowe, of Liverpool, and it was to the following 
purport:— 
Gentlemen, —While admitting the great superiority of the decimal system of weights 
and measures in use on the Continent, over the no-svstera we have here, I feel yet as 
certain of its ultimate abandonment as any advocate of that system can be of its pre¬ 
vious successful establishment. This, like the latter, is merely a question of time. 
It is not that I am opposed to a rotary, or revolving, principle in enumeration. That 
would be to retrograde into barbarism. The inventor of our present numeral scale, 
like the inventor of the steam-engine, of the printing-press, and the discoverer of gra¬ 
vitation, was, doubtless, one of those rarely-endowed intellects to which the gratitude 
of the world is due; but why are we to take it for granted that in figures only perfec¬ 
tion has been attained at once ? Has it been so in any other instance ? Is it likely 
that a scheme of enumeration, to the particular form of which the accident of the in¬ 
ventor’s using his finger-ends in order to illustrate it, most probably gave rise, should be 
incapable of improvement? Surely not. There is nothing inherent in, or peculiar to, 
the number ten, that the principle of rotation, or, if I may so express myself, of revo¬ 
lution round a cipher, should belong exclusively to it. It is just as applicable to any 
other,—to eight, for instance. As my object is to elicit, if possible, a reason why this 
cannot be so, or, if it be, why the number eight does not present much greater facilities 
for calculation than ten or any other number, save perhaps a multiple or divisor of 
eight, that could be selected, I will be as brief as possible in trying to explain myself, 
and so inducing you to find space for this letter. / know it will be condemned. Having 
been a favourite idea of mine for over thirty years, I can be in no doubt about that, 
for, so far, the mere mention of the thing has been enough. The notion of expecting 
its refutation by argument seems to be regarded as an affront to the understanding of 
