134 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
/Am.  Jour.  Pharm 
I      March,  1905. 
Over  330  votes  of  members  of  Parliament  have  been  promised  in 
support  of  the  bill  in  the  lower  house.  The  secretary  also  recounts 
a  list  of  representative  bodies  who  have  petitioned  Parliament  in 
favor  of  the  reform. 
The  Metric  System  in  Medicine. — The  impending  introduction  of 
the  metric  system  of  weights  and  measures  into  Great  Britain  has 
been  the  direct  cause  o  considerable  discussion  on  the  supposed 
shortcomings  of  that  system  from  a  practical  point  of  view. 
While  many  of  the  points  are,  perhaps,  not  very  well  taken,  and 
while  many  of  the  suggestions  that  have  been  made  are  quite  im- 
practicable, there  is  one,  a  practical  name  for  the  quantity  of  a  fluid 
contained  in  a  cubic  centimeter,  that  has  made  its  appearance  in  a 
recent  number  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Journal,  and  is  well  worth 
repeating.  This  quantity,  frequently  referred  to  as  c.c,  it  is  pro- 
posed to  call  a  mil,  from  milli  liter,  the  thousandth  part  of  a  liter.  If 
this  name  were  generally  adopted  we  could  have  deci-mil,  centi-mil 
and  milli-mil,  for  the  tenth,  hundredth  and  thousandth  part  of  a  c.c. 
Proprietary  Medicines  in  New  Zealand. — According  to  a  recently 
published  regulation  the  government  of  New  Zealand  will  require 
that  after  June  30,  1905,  "All  patent  medicines  imported  or  sold  in 
the  colony  must  have  the  contents,  with  their  exact  proportions, 
legibly  printed  on  the  bottle,  box  or  container,  and  if  any  poison  is 
contained  in  the  medicine,  the  words  '  This  contains  poison  '  must 
be  added.    (Phar.  Jour.,  1905,  p.  94.) 
The  History  of  Pharmacy  has  attracted  more  than  usual  attention 
during  the  past  three  months.  In  Germany  a  most  comprehensive 
History  of  Pharmacy,  by  Hermann  Schelenz,  has  but  recently  been 
published  by  Julius  Springer,  Berlin.  This  book  contains  upwards 
of  900  pages  and  includes  a  history  of  pharmacy  and  the  allied  sci- 
ences from  the  earliest  times  to  the  present. 
The  History  of  the  Paris  School  of  Pharmacy,  which  has  been  in 
press  for  nearly  a  year,  is  said  to  be  ready  for  distribution  in  the 
near  future.  A  copy  of  this  book,  which,  as  will  be  remembered,  is 
being  published  as  a  memorial  of  the  centenary  of  the  Superior 
School  of  Pharmacy  was  shown  at  a  recent  meeting  of  the  Society 
of  Pharmacy  of  Paris,  where  it  elicited  favorable  comment. 
The  Pharmacopoeia  as  a  Reflection  of  Contemporary  Development 
is  the  title  of  a  series  of  articles  contributed  by  Prof.  A.  Tschirch 
(Schweiz.  Woch.  Scht.  f.  Chem.  u.  Pharm.,  1904,  p.  602,  et  seq.)  on 
