METRIC SYSTEM.
In the course of a lecture delivered before the New York Academy
of Science, to demonstrate that the metric system must be taught more
through the senses than to the mind, Dr. E. Seguin shows some of the
advantages physicians would derive from the use of this quantitative
language in practice, and in recording observations.
' ' Foremost in human interest is the uniformity of weights in pre-
scriptions, which would prevent the grave or fatal results attending the
oomposition abroad of medicines prescribed here. And the uniformity
of measures which would give the possibility of writing observations
uniform—that is to say comparable at sight—with those of other na-
tions.
"Then comes the possibility of mathematically accounting for the
vital functions intrusted to the physician, in health at first, during their
waste in disease, and in the course of their recuperation under treat-
ment ; and to make these individual records serve as mathematical
■elements of true medical statistics.
' ' These records and the following ones, could be rendered much
more valuable by being made on metric paper (a paper water lined, one
way with the millimeter, centimeter and decimeter-line; and the other
way with centimetric and decimetric water-lines only). I will name
among the applications of this paper to the precision of our art, the tra-
cing of the curves of the diurnal and pathological variations of the tem-
perature, pulse and respiration; the figures furnished by the haemato-
meters, spyrometer, dynamometer, various urinoscopes, etc.; the gra-
phic of the myograph, of the sphygmograph, and of other self-graphing
instruments; the drawings or photographs of the microscopic specimens,
and other perishable or evanescent data, which lose part of their
interest if their proportions have not been taken on an invariable scale.
" I cannot omit the use of the metric paper-bands, on which, in im-
portant cases, must be telegraphed, from the bedside to the doctor's
■desk, the sudden break in the course of the vital functions, which fore-
tells a crisis avertable only by telegraphic swiftness. Now that instru-
ments of medical precision are invented as fast as the want of nicety in
■diagnosis demands them, nothing is more necessary than a means of
concentrating their data on the uniform, and all but uniformly accepted
plans of the metric system, of the metric scales, and of the metric paper.
The great founders of the first societies of * medical observation,'
longed in vain for such means of record of their admirable observa-
tions as are now within the grasp of the whole profession.
"Let us, therefore, follow Europe in the use of the metric system;
but let us show European physicians the use of the ' metric plan ' in
medical observation, beating them on their own ground, literally with
a piece of paper.
"Our mind has come to that, but not our routine and automatism.
Most of our medical schools and hospital clinics teach by the old
weights and measures; few physicians prescribe in the metric language,
and the druggists who know better (not all, of course), smile and put
up according to direction. The best surgeons import their instruments
for no other superiority over our home manufactures than their metric
scale. The Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York State Medical
Societies recommend the use of the metric system; the U. S. Medical
Marine Service makes it official and obligatory; and the Secretary of
the Navy sarcastically remarks, in his last report to Congress, that this
change has caused no evil results. Could we not benignantly promise
the same results to private initiative ? "—Medical 'Record.

{'source': 'PubMedDataset'}