As"pi°mberi9ro5m-}  Progress  in  Pharmacy.  441 
hopes  with  regard  to  the  prospect  of  the  metric  system  of  weights 
and  measures  being  generally  adopted  in  course  of  time  for  dispensing 
purposes  in  England.  Those  who  devised  and  elaborated  the  system 
never  had  in  view  the  prevailing  rule,  in  English-speaking  countries, 
of  '  solids  by  weight  and  liquids  by  measure,'  otherwise  provisions 
would  doubtless  have  been  made  for  measuring  smaller  qantities  of 
liquids  than  the  one-thousandth  part  of  a  liter.  In  that  case,  we 
should  not  have  seen  the  cubic  centimeter  adopted  as  a  measure  of 
capacity,  nor  would  there  have  been  any  temptation  to  indicate  doses 
of  liquid  medicaments  in  unthinkable  decimal  fractions  of  a  fluid 
gramme.  So  long  as  the  dose  of  Scheele's  hydrocyanic  acid  was 
given  as  '0-o6  to  0-24  c.c.,'  so  long  would  medical  practitioners  and 
pharmacists  prefer  to  think  and  speak  of  it  as  '  1  to  4  minims,'  and 
there  would  have  been  an  insurmountable  barrier  to  the  use  of  the 
metric  system  by  English-speaking  prescribers  and  dispensers.  But 
the  coming  of  the  '  mil '  alters  the  position  entirely,  since  that  term 
and  those  representing  fractional  parts  of  the  milliliter  will  ade- 
quately and  conveniently  replace  the  fluid  drachm  and  the  minim. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  new  terms  may  be  used  freely  in  pharma- 
ceutical literature,  so  that  they  may  become  quite  familiar  before  the 
issue  of  the  next  British  Pharmacopoeia,  in  which  the  mil  and  its 
fractions  will  presumably  be  employed  to  the  exclusion  of  less  accu- 
rate denominations."  ("Gnomon,"  in  Phar.  Jour.,  July  8,  1905, 
page  32.) 
The  British  Pharmacopoeia. — Dr.  Donald  Macallister,  in  his  presi- 
dential address  to  the  General  Medical  Council,  in  referring  to  the 
coming  revision  of  the  British  Pharmacopoeia,  said :  "  The  Pharma- 
copoeia Committee  has  decided  that  it  is  expedient  to  appoint 
committees  of  reference  to  advise  it  on  points  of  chemistry,  botany, 
pharmacology  and  pharmacy.  With  the  courteous  assistance  of  the 
pharmaceutical  societies  of  Great  Britain  and  of  Ireland  a  committee 
of  reference  in  pharmacy  has  first  been  appointed.  It  consists  of 
expert  pharmacists,  with  Mr.  Hills  as  chairman  and  Professor 
Greenish  as  secretary,  to  whom  questions  relating  to  pharmacopoeial 
pharmacy  will  be  referred  for  investigation  and  report."  [Phar. 
Jour,  1905,  page  795.) 
Amalgamation  in  Great  Britain. — The  Liverpool  Chemists'  Asso- 
ciation has  issued  a  circular  to  the  chemists  of  the  district  stating 
that  it  is  proposed  to  amalgamate  th,e  Liverpool  School  of  Pharmacy 
