360     HOW  TO  PRESCRIBE  AND  HOW  TO  WEIGH  IN  GRAINS. 
In  our  present  remarks  we  confine  ourselves  to  dispensing  and 
prescribing;  as  for  manufacturing,  that  is  no  business  of  the 
practitioner.  The  Medical  Council  have  thought  fit  to  give 
formulae  for  the  manufacture  of  drugs  on  the  large  scale,  which 
manufacturers  may  laugh  at  or  adopt,  as  they  please  ;  and  for 
processes  such  as  these,  the  pound,  with  its  even  binary  divisions 
of  half,  quarter,  eighth,  etc.,  and  the  ounce,  with  similar  divisions, 
may  be  convenient  and  sufficient. 
But  we  do  not  prescribe  pounds  or  ounces  for  our  patients. 
The  real  unit  for  this  purpose  is  the  grain.  Every  one  who 
prescribes  knows  how  many  grains  or  fractions  of  grains  he 
wishes  the  patient  to  take  •  and  whether  he  direct  one  dose  or 
many  to  be  made  up,  the  necessary  calculation  is  trivial,  and 
involves  no  difficulty  whatever.  And  it  is  far  easier  to  write 
down  any  given  number  of  grains  at  once,  than  it  is  to  first  re- 
duce them  to  drachms,  or  fractions  of  drachms,  or  scruples. 
It  will  be  more  convenient  under  this  new#system  to  use 
Arabic  numerals  than  Roman.  Most  of  us  now  write  in  English 
the  directions  how  medicines  are  to  be  taken.  We  have  done 
so,  since  a  chemist's  lad  once  translated  "  cyath.  vin.  aquae," 
as  "  a  glass  of  wine  and  water."  The  substitution  of  the  Arabic 
numeral  will  be  but  one  step  towards  abolishing  Latin 
altogether,  a  thing  which,  however  regretted,  is  inevitable. 
]  inscriptions  are  already  half  English.  When  we  see  »  grs. 
xx.,"  we  are  fain  to  advise  the  prescriber  not  to  jumble  Latin 
and  English  together  in  one  phrase,  but  to  choose  whichever  of 
the  two  tongues  he  understands  best,  and  write  wholly  in  that. 
Suppose,  then,  we  wish  to  write  a  prescription  for  eight  doses, 
each  containing  eight  grains  of  carbonate  of  ammonia,  ten  of 
bicarbonate  of  potass,  and  fifteen  of  nitrate  of  potass, — 
B.  Arnmoniae  carb.,  gr.  64  ;  potassae  bicarb.,  gr.  80  ;  potassaa 
nitratis,  gr.  120  ;  aq.  destillatae,  fl.  oz,  8  ;  m.  ft.  mist. 
Sig. — "  One  fluid  ounce  by  measure  to  be  taken  every  four 
hours, vwith  half  a  fluid  ounce  of  lemon-juice,  and  the  same  of 
water." 
Such  a  mode  of  prescribing  quantities  would  answer  every 
purpose  There  could  be  nothing  gained  by  writing  "  gr.  lxiv.," 
nor  yet  "  3j.  et  gr.  iv.,"  instead  of  «  gr.  64,"  and  so  with  the 
other  quantities.    To  use  scruples  or  drachms  and  Roman  nu- 
