Observations on medical weights and measures.

  • Wilson, Charles.
Date:
[1859?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on medical weights and measures. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    11/26 (page 203)
    But we shall best arrive here at a clear conception of what became then, and continues now, the condition of the medical metrology of the United Kingdom, through a brief recapitulation of the leading noints which have been elicited in the preceding slight sketch ot its more recent history. We have learned that the system of troy or apothecaries' weights, originally established for exclusive use in the sale and compounding of medicines, has been, in spite of injunction and remonstrance, gradually infringed upon, until all quantities reaching, or exceeding, a quarter of an ounce are universally sold by avoirdupois weight, and all galenical preparations are prevalently compounded by means of a commutation of the former into the latter standard: that, through obvious grounds of exception, dependent on the dominant tendencies of commerce, all attempts having failed in retaining the druggists within the rule primarily established, there has been a growing disposition on the part of our leading medical authorities to incline towards them, and to sanction that avoirdupois system as a consistent whole, which has already been intruded in so large a part: and that, finally, the result of this has been an adop- tion, on the part of the whole Colleges, of the imperial liquid mea- sures, based upon the avokdupois standard, for general use in medicine; with the partial adoption, limited as yet to one division of the empire, of a plan of weights for solids intermediate between the two standards; and the retention of the troy weights in their homo- geneity for the other two divisions, in as far, at least, as prevailing usages permit them. This state must be clearly one of transition; for the changes introduced have increased an intricacy which was formerly sufficiently embarrassing: yet it points as manifestly in the direction towards wdaich the whole system tends, in order that it may be brought into complete harmony, not only with itself, in its several parts, but with the entire arrangements of commerce throughout the country. Meanwhile, it leaves us to regret the position of the druggist, both within his own more peculiar domain and in his rela- tions to medicine, while he is thus constrained to the use of divers weights, by his being still compelled to buy in one weight and sell in another; or by his assuming arbitrarily the right to sell some- times in one weight and sometimes in another, for it is a merely specious and inadmissible distinction which separates dispensing from selling. We deprecate this the more, that he is unique in this pre- dicament ; and that, with a singular impropriety, it is that depart- ment of trade which is the closest in its relations to science, which has not only had tolerated in it a laxity of procedure so wholly adverse to scientific rule, and such even as the law does not now admit in the shop of the pettiest huckster, but which, dealing as it does with the highest of human interests, has been thus rendered liable to the more momentous charge of inflicting needless risks of error and danger upon the public. The means of escaping from such a position, and from such imputations, even if undeserved, are well worthy of consideration, and of more serious efforts than the