Excerpt from Report on Weights and Measures: Read Before the Pharmaceutical Association at Their Eight Annual Session, Held in Boston September 15, 1859By this incongruous and irrational system, we are constantly com pelled to resort to compound arithmetic, as it is called, to make the most trivial computations, and not unfrequently must reduce a long series of values to their lowest terms, or rather to a common unit, by a process of multiplication and addition, merely to render arithmetical calculations practicable, and then immediately re convert the resulting amount to the original form, or to its largest units, by the reverse process of division and subtraction.Still more strange and embarrassing is it (as though these ia conveniences were not sufficient for the popular taste, ) that so simple an idea as that of weight must be estimated by distinct standards and divisions, varying with the substance to be weighed, and that the same terms should thus have come to denote entirely different values. As Mr. Adams has well stated in his valuable Report on Weights and Measures, The pound avoirdupois is heavier than the pound Troy, but the ounce avoir dupois is lighter than the ounce Troy. The weights and measures of all the old systems present the perpetual paradox of a whole not equal to all its parts. That these great and glaring incon veniences should have been so long tolerated, would appear sur prising, did we not consider the wide extent to which the received denominations are employed, and the extreme difficulty of inducing any large numbers of men to abandon that to which they have been long accustomed, for an untried system, which, whatever its promise of advantage, would necessarily involve considerable ad ditional labor, and much confusion in the attempt to adopt it. Indeed, so all-important is uniformity to the successful working of any system of weights and measures, that it may well be doubted whether any abstract excellence of method would justify the introduction of new scales or standards, unless they offered the prospect of a general adoption. This consideration is sufficient to remind the Committee and this Association that we can take no final action in the matter, that the only proper function of the body in this connection is merely to suggest such improvements as may be deemed expedient - since only a political sanction can give the authoritative establishment to a code of measures, so vital to its eficient working, and its national acceptance.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.