98 
WEIGHTS  OF  THE  PHARMACOPOEIA. 
enlisted  in  its  favor  on  this  side  of  the  water,  we  yet  venture  to 
question  its  judiciousness,  and  to  suggest  what  appears  to  us  a 
preferable  scheme.  We  confess  that  the  new  British  system 
does  seem  to  us  very  much  like  the  discarding  of  a  substance  for 
the  retention  of  a  shadow.  What  virtue  is  there  in  20  times  — 
3  times  —  8-—,  that  these  should  be  preserved  after  all  their 
old  significance  is  lost?  The  surrender  of  our  very  standard  of 
pharmaceutic  weight,  the  grain,  is  a  sacrifice  which  ought  to 
be  compensated  by  very  undoubted  advantages.  The  grain  is 
perhaps  the  most  important  standard  unit  of  our  whole  metro- 
logy. Not  only  is  it  at  present  the  recognised  measure  of  the 
physician  and  pharmaceutist  throughout  a  great  portion  of 
Europe,* — that  in  which  chiefly  is  embodied  the  long-acquired 
experience  and  accumulated  knowledge  of  the  healing  art, — the 
laboriously  ascertained  and  accurately  observed  relations  and 
values  of  all  the  more  active  portion  of  the  Materia  Medica,  
but  it  is  the  measure,  which  outside  of  our  profession  is  the  one 
almost  universally  employed  as  the  unit  of  comparison  for  all 
minute  investigations  and  precise  determinations. 
Believing,  therefore,  that  the  grain  is  the  weight  that  of  all 
others  we  can  least  afford  to  lose,  (unless  at  the  price  of  a  very 
perfect  system  in  return,)  we  propose  to  retain  this  unit  at  its 
present  value, — the  7000th  part  of  the  pound,  and  to  abolish  all 
intermediate  denominations.  This,  it  appears  to  us,  would  dis- 
place the  anomalous  "Troy  weights"  with  the  least  practical 
inconvenience,  and  would  form  the  simplest  mode  of  reconciling 
our  professional  with  the  common  or  commercial  system.  Those 
who  advocate  a  decimal  system  of  division  for  weight  would  pro- 
bably find  this  the  very  easiest  and  most  expeditious  method  of 
introducing  such  a  system  ;  for  if  we  had  no  other  unit  but  the 
grain,  we  should  of  necessity  group  and  compound  it  by  our 
common  decimal  arithmetic. 
If  any  one  should  take  exception  to  the  high  numbers  some- 
times involved  by  this  scheme,  we  would  ask  which  is  the  more 
concise  and  distinct  form, — the  expression  "875  grains,"  or  the 
expression  "5i-?  ?vi.,  3j.,  and  gr.  xv.  ?"    Which  is  the  more 
*  Holland,  which  in  1817  adopted  the  French  system  of  Weights  and 
Measures,  still  retains  the  English  "  Apothecaries'  Weight." 
