Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/788

768 the system of apothecaries' weights and measures at present in use by the medical profession of the United States.

"In all the medical and surgical works of any importance printed in the English language the doses are expressed in apothecaries' weights and measures. The immediate effect of compelling medical officers of the army to substitute the metrical weights and measures would be, to force them to make a series of arithmetical calculations every time they attempt to use the prescriptions or doses laid down in any medical work written in the English language. This thankless and unnecessary labor would waste much precious time, and an error might cost life. Moreover, the strength of the various medical tinctures and solutions in use in England and America has been so adjusted that the proper dose is expressed in even minims, drachms, or fluid ounces. Merely to substitute for these simple quantities the corresponding fractional numbers would be a silly waste of labor; and in order that a proper dose might be expressed in an even number of cubic centimetres, a revision of the Pharmacopœia would be necessary, and this would have to be followed by a corresponding revision of all the medical books in common use before the new Pharmacopœia could be conveniently used. In my opinion the best interests of sick officers and soldiers require that the medical staff of the army should, in all its operations, act in the most complete harmony with the medical profession of the United States, and I can not do otherwise than express my belief that the discordance in practice, which would be imposed by such a statute as is suggested, would be fraught with the most unfortunate consequences.

"2. As to the second question, while I admit that the enforced introduction of the metric system would produce less detriment to the public service if it were rendered obligatory upon the whole people than if its use were simply compelled in government transactions, I must express the opinion that great public inconvenience would result if at the present time its general use were rendered obligatory by the exercise of an arbitrary act of power, I leave to others to point out the disorders likely to result in the land measurements, the railroad interests, and the general machinery interests of the United States, in all of which the units at present employed are incommensurable with those of the metric system, so that the use of long decimal fractions in the most ordinary transactions would become imperatively necessary as the only road of escape from still greater evils. I confine myself merely to the question of the interests of the medical profession of the United States, and must express the opinion that it will be time enough when they have asked for it to impose upon that body a change which will put all their operations out of harmony with the similar proceedings of other English speaking nations. For assuredly many of the inconveniences which would be felt by government officers, if compelled to use a system of weights and measures not used by the people, would be felt by the whole