Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437, page 49 by Various Authors
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to shew, as Mr Taylor has very satisfactorily done,[1] how that which has been well begun may be followed out and completed by the establishment of more complete uniformity, and the legalisation of decimal gradations for facilitating calculation.
The two co-existing pounds originally adjusted in relation to the specific gravities of wheat and spring-water, are now the sole remains and representatives of a fanciful theory spun in the middle ages; and the first question that occurs is, whether the pound troy, having served its purpose, might not be done away with, and the pound avoirdupois ascertained by reference to a cubic inch of distilled water. We were told forty years ago, that for the introduction of a uniform and scientific system, we must wait for the spread of education in the community; and we feel somewhat ashamed now to find that the members of the medical profession, which is understood to be one of the most highly-educated bodies, offer the most formidable opposition to reformation in this respect. 'The testimony, however,' says Mr Taylor, 'of many individuals of the medical profession, especially the younger portion, and certainly that of the retailers and dispensers of drugs, tends entirely to shew the practicability of a beneficial and convenient change. With all these, there appears no more serious difficulty to encounter than that involved in altered editions of their usual dispensatories, or books of reference'--an amount of trouble and expense, we should say, not greater, certainly, in proportion to the position of the parties concerned, than that which was forced on the poor chandlers and milkwomen by the act of 1826.
Then, to adapt the avoirdupois pound to the further objects in view, it must be reconstructed as to its divisional parts. In order to this, it is not necessary that the nomenclature should be changed, or that our poor people should be puzzled with the decas, and hexas, and millias which has formed the greatest practical difficulty in the