676 
PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
with a weight somewhere about grains, and he would call that a pea; and 
then he would say, 8 peas make a nut, 8 nuts a plum, 8 plums an egg, 8 eggs a 
pound, 8 pounds a cat, 8 cats a ram, 8 rams an ox. And then in measure he 
suggested a similar plan. Now, this might sound rather curious, but really it 
was the best expression of the octonary system that he (Dr. Attfiekl) had met 
with, and it was all the more valuable to them inasmuch as it was in their 
Journal, and was the work of a pharmaceutist. 
Mr. Bottle did not contemplate addressing the meeting, but he might 
remark that, living as he did on the coast, the French system was constantly 
brought under his notice, and he saw the importance of their becoming 
acquainted with it. He was not prepared to say that at the present time they, 
as Pharmaceutical Chemists, were in a condition to adopt the metrical system. 
They would want a large amount of education on the part of the medical pro¬ 
fession before they would be able to get much in advance themselves. lie 
thought the suggestion for a Companion to the Pharmacopoeia was a good one, 
and that if they could work alternately by one system and the other, and get 
themselves familiar with it, it would be an advantage. It would be an advan¬ 
tage to young men commencing business to make themselves masters of the 
decimal system. They could not tell where they might be located in business. 
Therefore he would advise his young friends who were undergoing their proba¬ 
tionary terms to take advantage of the opportunities they now had, and make 
themselves masters of the decimal system. It was easy for them to do it now ; 
but when they had the responsibilities of a business resting upon them, or got 
beyond fifty years of age, they would find it exceedingly difficult. 
Mr. Haselden said that Mr. Carteighe had already put the subject so well 
before them, that there was but little for him to add. As regarded the system, 
he thought it was the general opinion that they must come to it some day or 
other,—not because it was the best system that could be devised, but because it 
was the system most generally followed everywhere. As to how they were to 
make themselves thoroughly acquainted with it,—which, he believed, was one 
of the principal objects Professor Redwood had in view in bringing the subject 
before them,—he scarcely knew what to advise, unless it were that they must 
study the subject by working out certain sums and figures under the metrical 
system. Of course with the young there would be no difficulty at all, as it 
would be part and parcel of their education ; but those in the middle of life 
would have, as it were, to go to school again, and it was not so easy to do that, 
and bend themselves to a new system. Still, necessity knew no law ; and if the 
system was to come into use, they must find it out somehow or other. Now, as 
regarded the Pharmacopoeia as a means of setting forth the system and impress¬ 
ing it upon their.minds, he thought with Mr. Carteighe, that probably some¬ 
thing in the shape of a supplement would have the desired effect; or, if certain 
of the Pharmacopoeia formulae were worked out and published in the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Journal, it would be the means of bringing the matter before them. 
He should hardly like to see the whole of the Pharmacopoeia as it now stood 
printed with the metrical weights alongside their own. It would be very tire¬ 
some to wT>rk that out. With regard to the medical profession, they were so 
highly educated that they would have no difficulty in bringing themselves to 
understand and work out this system; but it would be difficult to get them to 
change what they had been doing all their lives. Even at the present time 
they saw this when they were asked to write prescriptions in grains. The old 
grain was maintained as much as anything out of deference to them, and it was 
supposed that they would leave off using the term scruples, and that they would 
put the quantities in equivalent numbers of grains instead. There were very 
few who wrote in grains at all ; the majority still used the old scruples, drachms, 
ounces, and so on, and there would be the same difficulty in inducing them 
