ON THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES USED IN PHARMACY. 
227 
being used as a temporary change to promote the subsequent adoption of a more 
permanent system, blor are the advantages of their concordance with the 
English weights so important as to counterbalance the disadvantage of their 
adoption perpetuating discordance of English weights with a system so exten¬ 
sively used as the metrical. The octonary system of the American Pharmaceu¬ 
tical Association, the only one which can be said to compete with the metrical 
in regard to completeness and uniformity of arrangement, is also the only one 
which can compete with it as a plan for universal and permanent adoption. 
The existence of this rivalry is my strongest inducement for delaying the recom¬ 
mendation of any great change till the merits of octavial, decimal, and if 
may be also of duodecimal systems have been fully canvassed, and for recom¬ 
mending that the reform of British metrology should, for the present, be limited 
to such changes as could, without great difficulty, be made in the existing 
weights and measures, and w r ould render them harmonious and unequivocal. It 
is on this- ground that the modification of the Irish system, which 1 before sug¬ 
gested for the reform of pharmaceutical weights, I would now recommend for 
general national adoption—not as an institution to be unchangeable in future 
ages, but as a simple alteration which could free us from all the great evils of 
our present want of system, and enable us, at a future time, to adopt any better 
arrangement with greater facility than at present. The table previously given 
would, for general purposes, require a little expanding, thus—• 
1 grain = 1-01259 troy gi-ain. 
1 minim 
18 grains = 1 scruple. 
54 minims 
3 scruples = 1 dram. 
8 drams 
8 drams = 1 ounce. 
16 ounces 
16 ounces = 1 pound. 
10 pints 
14 pounds = 1 stone. 
1 cwt. of 
8 stones = 1 cwt. 
1 ton 
20 cwt. — 1 ton. 
Measures. 
= 1-01259 troy gr. of wat jr. 
— 1 dram. 
= 1 ounce. 
= 1 pint. 
= 1 gallon, 
water = 11-2 gallons. 
= 224 gallons. 
—the weights above the pound remaining as at present, the measures correspond¬ 
ing to the weights of water up to the pound. The 5-ounce gill, 20-ounce pint, 
and all measures above the gallon being abolished ; though it might be admis¬ 
sible to estimate w r ater, or any other fluid, by the ton, it being an actual weight 
and not a fluid measure. 
Corn and other materials now sold by bushels and quarters wrnuld be more 
satisfactorily estimated by weight, especially in large quantities; also, there is 
no reason why gold and silver should not be negotiated by the same weights 
that are used for other purposes, the troy weights being entirely abolished. The 
rejection of either stone or quarter would be a matter for future consideration ; 
useless weights might at any time be erased from the table if its further simpli¬ 
fication was found desirable. 
Turning to the third case supposed, that is, that w r e have to contrive or select 
the best system possible, without reference to existing customs, which may give 
a temporary and unreal advantage to those which are made to suit present cir¬ 
cumstances. The systems to which I shall draw attention, as suited for this 
purpose, are the metric decimal and the American octavial. 
The advantages of a decimal system are simply that it brings the tables of 
weights and measures into accordance with our mode of expressing number, 
every place giving a value to the number which occupies it; so that if several 
numbers are placed together, each has, in virtue of its position, 10 times the 
value of that to the right-hand of it and -Aj of the value of that at the left; 
and these positional values are multiplied by the value of the digit which occu¬ 
pies the place. Thus in abstract number, 3, 3, 3 signifies 3 hundreds, 3 tens, 
and 3 units, the middle digit having 10 times the value of the one and T V the 
