484  American  Pharmaceutical  Association.      { ^ctoblr?mi.m' 
that  it  may  receive  consideration  at  the  coming  session  of  the  57th 
Congress. 
Owing  to  the  many  changes  in  the  membership  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  it  will  be  necessary  to  acquaint  a  large  number  of 
new  members  with  the  advantages  to  be  gained  by  the  adoption 
of  this  measure  and  your  committee  would  request  the  active  sup- 
port of  the  individual  members  of  this  Association  in  an  effort  to 
convince  their  Representatives  in  Congress  of  the  desirability  of  the 
adoption  of  the  metric  system. 
Although  the  growth  of  the  use  of  the  metric  system  by  physi- 
cians is  not  as  rapid  as  we  would  wish,  its  adoption  in  manufacturing 
enterprises  is  certainly  encouraging.  While  our  Government  at 
Washington  has  taken  about  thirty-four  years  to  think  the  subject 
over,  our  practical  business  men  are  likely  to  settle  the  question  in 
many  lines  of  trade  by  adopting  metric  measurement  for  carrying 
on  foreign  business  transactions. 
The  expanding  foreign  commerce  of  our  country  will  have  an 
important  bearing  upon  the  final  outcome  of  the  question.  The 
advocates  of  the  metric  system  have  now  the  support  of  nearly  all  of 
the  trade  press  and  many  of  the  leading  daily  papers  actively  advo- 
cate its  adoption. 
It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  millions  of  dollars  invested  in 
intricate  machinery  is  to  be  lost  by  discarding  the  latter  and  re- 
placing with  new  models  built  on  metric  measurements,  but  a 
gradual  change  can  be  made  and  this  as  rapidly  as  demands  will 
warrant.  Probably  no  form  of  occupation  using  weights  and  meas- 
ures could  make  the  complete  change  with  less  expense  than  those 
of  medicine  and  pharmacy.  It  is  perfectly  obvious  that  pharmacists 
can  never  wholly  discard  old  systems  of  weights  and  measures  until 
such  time  as  physicians  shall  entirely  abandon  their  use.  As  we 
have  before  advocated  it  will  be  necessary  for  our  medical  colleges 
to  teach  their  students  only  in  terms  of  the  metric  system,  and  in 
a  comparatively  brief  period  the  change  from  the  old  to  the  new  can 
be  accomplished  in  so  far  as  our  occupation  is  directly  concerned. 
Appended  to  this  report  was  submitted  the  complete  report  of 
the  Committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives  which  includes  the 
bibliography  of  the  documents  presented  to  Congress  from  the  year 
1790  to  1896,  which  was  recommended  to  the  Publication  Com- 
mittee  of  this  Association  for  printing  in  the  proceedings. 
