METRICAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 
677 
to prescribe metrically. For instance, a physician wished to give a grain 
of calomel to a child. How much was it? It was about two-thirds of a deci¬ 
gramme, or something like seven centigrammes. Although he quite ap¬ 
proved of the system, he thought it would be a work of considerable time 
before they would be able to get it adopted, and by that time they would pro¬ 
bably require and get a new Pharmacopoeia, or a new edition of the present 
one. In the meantime they must all make themselves acquainted with the sys¬ 
tem in the best way they could. The more they worked out the formulae now 
in the Pharmacopoeia, the more likely they would be to get some acquaintance 
with it. 
Mr. Carteighe would like to rectify two omissions, to which he attached 
some importance. In the supplement or companion he had suggested the doses 
should be put in the same way as the weights. They wanted to give doses 
of so many grains,—5 grains, say, or 15 grams. It should be written 15 
grains’ dose, and after that the equivalent 1 gramme. This would render it of 
great service, and it would not clash with any of the existing handbooks. As 
regards prescribing, he intended to mention that this process of fusion would 
be very much easier for the medical profession if they prescribed in doses. 
He conceived that to be the best way of prescribing. He thought it was 
much better to order their ingredients in the dose they intended to give. To 
put the quantity of liquid and the quantity of menstruum was better than to 
lump them. If they did that they would reduce the number of weights, and 
they could ring the changes upon a very small number of things as regarded 
mixtures. 
Mr. Morson did not know whether there existed in England any work of a 
pharmaceutical character which gave the relative weights of the French and 
English systems in a common table, which might be placed on the back of a 
card ; but commercial men, who paid great attention to these things, had a book 
in which they could see the price of a kilogram of any substance and its En¬ 
glish equivalent. Supposing a kilogram should cost so much money, they could 
ascertain what that would represent in English money per pound weight, and 
so on, down to ounces, and other small quantities. It seemed to him that a 
simple table of that description, placed in the pharmacy or shop of any chemist, 
would give him the relative weights at one view. It might be done on the back 
of a card, and hung up or pasted against the wall, where it would be always 
ready for reference. 
The Chairman remarked that the book Mr. Morson had referred to was 
exceedingly convenient, and there was no difficulty in understanding it imme¬ 
diately. It was astonishing with what facility even common porters got to use 
the French system in weighing up goods, when they had had but very little 
practice. If they had a set of French weights by them, they got to talk of 
kilograms and grams just as freely as they did of ounces, pouuds, and hundred¬ 
weights. That was his experience and the experience of others who had had 
much dealing with the French weights. He did not see there would be any 
very great difficulty in the way of introducing the metrical system. It was so 
much simpler than the existing method that it would facilitate calculations im¬ 
mensely. Any one who had had to calculate sums of money, for instance, 
in dollars and cents, must have been struck .with the simplicity of the calcula¬ 
tion. The ease with which an invoice was made out in the American currency 
was marvellous as compared with the labour which even the most ready 
reckoner experienced in calculating an invoice or bill of parcels in our own 
currency of £. s. d. The first great difficulty, as it appeared to him, was to 
get into the mind some idea of unity ; the unit they started from, and all the 
rest being multiples by 10, it was just as easy as putting down 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7, 
or the date of the year. As Mr. Carteighe had brought before the meeting the 
