Amjine"*i87h7arm'}  Proposed  Changes  in  the  Pharmacopeia.  291 
5.)  Upon  the  reflective  there  may  dawn  some  gleam  of  sympathy  with 
the  dismay  naturally  felt  by  the  Committee  on  being  confronted  with 
the  formidable  task  which  had  somewhat  inconsiderately  been  imposed 
upon  it.  The  able,  conscientious,  and  esteemed  President  of  the  Con- 
vention, and  chairman  of  the  Revision  Committee,  is  no  longer  with 
us  to  justify  the  course  he  felt  obliged  to  recommend  and  to  urge  under 
these  harrassing  conditions  ;  but  the  more  sacred  becomes  the  duty  of 
those  who  knew  the  man,  to  shield  his  memory  from  any  suggestion  of 
wilfulness,  indifference,  or  want  of  fidelity  to  the  high  trust  committed 
to  his  charge. 
The  professional  employment  of  medicines  involves  three  successive 
stages  or  processes,  each  by  a  different  agent.  First,  the  prescription 
of  the  remedy  by  the  physician  ;  second,  the  dispensation  of  the  com- 
pounded materials  by  the  pharmacist  ;  and  third,  the  administration  of 
the  prepared  medicine  by  the  attendant  nurse,  or  occasionally  by  the 
patient.  In  the  first  two  of  these  operations  there  is  no  serious  diffi- 
culty in  the  exclusive  use  of  gravimetric  apportionment  ;  but,  in  the 
final  step,  the  difficulty  of  administering  liquid  doses  by  weight,  appears 
to  be  insuperable.  If,  then,  the  patient  must  continue  to  take  his  pre- 
scribed mixture  by  a  convenient  measure,  (as  the  teaspoon  or  the  wine- 
glass,) it  seems  necessary  that  the  quantity  compounded  by  the  apothe- 
cary, in  order  to  give  a  determinate  number  of  doses,  should  also  be 
estimated  in  multiples  of  such  measure  j  or,  in  other  words,  by  a  fluid 
volume. 
In  view  of  the  probable  adoption  of  a  purely  gravimetric  system  by 
the  next  decennial  Convention,  would  it  not  be  eminently  desirable  that 
a  suitable  popular  measure  of  accurate  size  should  be  adopted  by  the 
Convention,  for  the  administration  of  liquids,  to  supersede  the  common 
variable  teaspoon  ?  If  weights  are  preferable  to  measures  in  the  prep- 
aration of  the  mixture,  by  reason  of  their  finer  accuracy,  and  if  such 
more  accurate  mixture  must  continue  to  be  administered  by  volume,  is 
there  not  a  corresponding  need  that  a  greater  uniformity  and  accuracy 
should  be  attempted  in  the  final  stage  of  the  actual  exhibition  of  the 
dose  ? 
We  strongly  urge  the  recommendation  therefore — in  the  interests  of 
the  physician  and  of  the  pharmacist,  as  in  the  best  interest  of  the  sick, 
that  a  standard  spoon  of  accurately  determined  capacity  should  be 
authoritatively  adopted  by  the  Convention  of  1880,  and  universally 
