678 
PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
subject of the examinations, he (the Chairman) would observe, that in future 
the Board of Examiners of this Society would require of the candidates a fami¬ 
liarity with the metrical system ; and, therefore, it behoved every student of 
pharmacy to make himself acquainted with it. This would, in a short time, be 
the means of familiarizing a large number of active men with the system, and, 
no doubt, tend greatly to bring it into general use. The idea had also been 
suggested that this Society should assist local associations, by sending to them 
series of weights, so that students in the country might be able to become 
acquainted with the metrical system. This was a very good suggestion, and he 
hoped it might be carried out; and he trusted that, first of all, they might have 
a perfect set of weights and measures in their own Museum. He thought 
there was great objection to bending an old system to a new one; and he con¬ 
fessed that he sympathized with Mr. Carteighe in his objection to Professor 
Redwood’s tetram. He would rather abolish the old system, and begin de novo 
with a new one. 
Mr. Martindale thought the principal difficulty in introducing the new 
system in pharmacy would be with regard to measures. The difficulty would be 
for a physician to give anything to represent an ounce dose. In the London 
hospitals they prescribed one ounce, which was generally a dose; and they pre¬ 
pared enough to last the patient a certain time. There was nothing in the 
metrical system that would correspond to that, and in that consisted the objec¬ 
tion he had to that system, as regarded measures. The medical profession were 
somewhat averse to it. At present, medical students were taught the metrical 
system in most of the chemical laboratories before they entered any real prac¬ 
tice in pharmacy, and it was some difficulty to get them to understand the 
system of grains and drachms, when they had been first taught the system of 
grams, centigrams, decigrams, and so forth. . There was no doubt the duode¬ 
cimal or octavial system might be preferable in some cases ; and he should 
say that the duodecimal had some advantages over the octavial. So long as 
they had the decimal system of figures generally applied, they would be a long 
time before they could hope to have the octavial system ; in fact, he thought 
that was quite out of the question. 
Dr. Redwood, in reply, said there were two considerations principally which 
induced him to bring this subject forward. The first was, that in their present 
system, and especially as it was now arranged for pharmaceutical use and 
adopted in the Pharmacopoeia, there was a very great defect, which he referred 
to in his communication at the last meeting, namely, that they had no integer 
between the grain and the ounce, and that there was no simple relationship 
existing between these two; that the ounce was not the simple multiple of the 
grain. The great inconvenience, in some respects, and the very obvious clumsi¬ 
ness of this arrangement was very strongly impressed on his mind in the pre¬ 
paration of the Pharmacopoeia ; and at that time, in discussing the subject with 
the Committee, it was generally felt and admitted that the system in use at 
present could be only looked upon as a temporary expedient which must be 
superseded sooner or later. This, then, was the fiist consideration that in¬ 
duced him to think it desirable to bring the subject before this Society. And 
the other was, that the subject was now occupying, and had for some time 
occupied a great deal of the attention of many very eminent men, who were 
much impressed with the necessity for the adoption of some new system of 
weights and measures in this country, aud who generally, although not uni¬ 
formly, agreed in considering the metrical system that which it would be wisest 
and most expedient to adopt, as the best system that had yet been suggested as 
a whole, and that there was a better chance for its universal adoption through¬ 
out the civilized world than there would be of any other system. And many of 
those gentlemen who had recently been investigating the subject and endeavour- 
