188  New  System  of  Weights  and  Measures. 
to  the  fact  that  he  can  obtain,  already  prepared  for  him,  suitable 
drugs  made  in  large  quantities  by  reliable  manufacturing  firms." 
The  decrees  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  are  limited  in  operation 
because  its  powers  are  limited,  and  its  powers  are  limited  because 
it  is  neither  issued  under  governmental  auspices  nor  empowered 
to  act  by  legislative  enactment,  and  is  accorded  only  that  authority 
which  comes  from  common  consent  ;  hence,  unlike  all  foreign 
standards,  it  is  but  a  quasi-legal  standard,  with  no  legal  power  to 
make  decrees  and  no  authority  to  punish  their  violation. 
With  such  a  condition  of  affairs  existing,  coupled  with  a  positive 
and  almost  ineradicable  antagonism — an  antagonism  as  old  as  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race  itself — against  weighing  liquids  and  with  an 
insufficient  education  upon  the  merits  of  the  metric  system,  is  it 
strange  that  the  premature  adoption  of  "  parts  by  weight  "  has  been 
such  a  signal  failure  ?  If  the  dispensatories  and  commentaries, 
appreciating  the  public  need  had  not  seen  fit  to  insert  in  their 
works,  equivalents  alongside  of  pharmacopoeial  formulas,  it  is  ques- 
tionable whether  many  pharmacists  would  not  have  adhered  to  the 
earlier  standards. 
In  1887,1  Prof.  Joseph  P.  Remington,  in  an  admirable  paper,  read 
before  the  Penna.  Pharm.  Association,  entitled  "  Weights  and  Meas- 
ures in  Liquid  Preparations,"  after  disposing  of  the  fallacy  that, 
practically,  greater  accuracy  is  obtained  by  weighing  liquids  than  by 
measuring  them,  said  :  "  It  needs  very  little  time  to  prove  that  after 
five  years'  trial  before  the  country,  the  consensus  of  pharmaceutical 
opinion  is  greatly  in  favor  of  weighing  solids  and  measuring  liquids." 
What  was  true  at  that  time  is  equally  true  now. 
The  universal  creed  of  English-speaking  pharmacists  is :  Solids 
by  weight,  liquids  by  measure,  and,  had  the  Revision  Committee 
seen  fit  to  boldly  adopt,  in  all  formulas,  the  gram  for  solids  and  the 
cubic  centimeter  for  liquids,  the  metric  system  would  be  standing 
on  much  firmer  ground  to-day,  and  their  action  would  have  been 
eventually  sustained.  As  the  case  is,  where  there  was  apathy  and 
indifference  before,  there  exists  positive  antagonism,  and  the  whole 
metric  system  has  no  brighter  prospects  now  than  then. 
Viewed  in  a  purely  scientific  light,  the  high  value  of  the  metric 
system  cannot  be  questioned,  but  it  is  in  the  every-day  life  of  the 
1  A.  J.  P.,  1SS7,  p.  328. 
