8 SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY. 
meeting had originated with him, that he should say a few words on the subject. 
He had taken great interest in the movement in favour of the metric system of 
weights and measures for several years past, and as a member of the Pharma¬ 
copoeia Committee, he had pressed the subject on the notice of those with whom 
he was associated, and advocated the introduction of the new system into the 
Pharmacopoeia. At that time, however, they were not prepared for its adoption, 
although the London Committee had gone so far as to sanction the metric 
weights and measures being put in a separate column opposite the others. He 
thought this was a step in the right direction ; but afterwards, when the con¬ 
ference between the three committees took place in Edinburgh, the decision of 
the London Committee was altered, and it was determined that the metric system, 
with its equivalents in English weights and measures, should be given in a table 
at the beginning of the book. He thought the new system, if generally adopted, 
would save a great deal of labour to the rising generation, for they would no 
longer have to learn the number of grains in a scruple, of scruples in a drachm, 
and of drachms in an ounce, nor to learn the difference between the ounce and 
pound in the apothecaries and the avoirdupois weights. In the metric system 
the divisions and multiplications being all by ten, the subject and the calcula¬ 
tions were much simplified. In practice, too, he thought the advantages on the 
side of the metric system would greatly overbalance the little inconveniences and 
perplexities that might attend a change of systems. In the article on the sub¬ 
ject in the ‘ Pharmaceutical Journal,’ it was remarked that the new acre, being- 
equal to about two and a half of our present acres, men would find their posses¬ 
sions apparently reduced in extent. Thus, if he had an estate of five hundred 
acres, it was something to speak of, but under the new system it would be re¬ 
duced to two hundred acres. Some men might be influenced in their opinion 
by this effect, but the difference in the values of the acres would soon come to be 
known. It was thought by some that confusion might arise from the similarity 
between the words grain and gram, but he thought there was quite as much 
liability to error in the use of the symbols by which the scruple, drachm, and 
ounce were represented. In discussing the subject there, it would be the better 
course for them to confine their attention to the proposed measure as it affected 
their own occupations, and its applications to pharmacy and medicine, leaving it 
to others to consider its effects as applied for the varied purposes for which weights 
and measures were used. He concluded by moving that the following petition 
be presented to the House of Commons:— 
To the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland 
in Parliament assembled. 
The Petition of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain humbly showeth,— 
That your Petitioners regard with extreme satisfaction a Bill now before your Ho¬ 
nourable House, entitled “ A Bill for Decimalizing our existing system of Weights and 
Measures, and for establishing an Accordance between them and those of Foreign 
Countries.” 
That while your Petitioners are fully alive to certain inconveniences which must 
necessarily attend a time of transition from one system already established to another 
entirely new, they believe, on full consideration, that the advantages likely to arise from 
the change would fully compensate for such inconveniences. 
That the Weights and Measures of this country, notwithstanding all the efforts 
made in the last half-century to regulate them, are still various and unsatisfactory ; and 
your Petitioners are of opinion that this condition arises from the want of a fixed philo¬ 
sophical principle, or starting-point, from which they should all emanate, and increase or 
diminish by one uniform rate of progression. 
That your Petitioners believe the Metrical System in use in France, and now sought 
to be introduced into Great Britain, is, more than any other, framed on a sound and fixed 
basis; and that it would be of great advantage to the world in general to adopt that 
system in lieu of the various arbitrary national systems now in use. 
