REPORT OF ONE OF THE DELEGATES OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION TO THE FOREIGN MEDICAL ORGANIZATIONS (1879-80). HISTORIC.-May 8, 1878, at Atlanta, Ga., the American Medical Association, after hearing the Metric Note No. 6, voted unanimously the following resolutions: "1. That the American Medical Association adopts the International Metric System, and will use it in its Transactions. "2. Requests that those who present papers at its future meetings employ this system in their communications, or reprints thereof. "3. Requests the medical boards of the hospitals and dispensaries to adopt the Metric System in prescribing and recording cases; and that the Faculties of the medical and pharmaceutic schools adopt it in their didactic, clinical, or dispensing depart ments. "4. Requests the physicians familiar with the Metric System to help their confrères and the druggists in its application; and the delegates present at this session to work up the acceptance of the Metric System by their respective County and State Societies. "5. Requests our President to name a Metric Executive Committee, of which he shall be the ex-officio Chairman, and whose task will be to give unity and rapidity to this metric move ment." The committee was composed of President Theophilus Parvin, ex-officio Chairman; Edouard Seguin, of New York; E. Wiggles. worth, of Massachusetts; F. R. Weist, of Indiana. The American Medical Association appointed, also, as delegates to foreign medical organizations, Drs. J. M. Da Costa, of Pennsylvania; E. Seguin, of New York; L. P. Yandell, of Kentucky; Moses Gunn, of Illinois; J. T. Hodgen, of Missouri; Edward Warren, of France; Laurence Turnbull, of Pennsylvania; Lewis A. Sayre, of New York. August 8th. As a member of both representations, Dr. E. Seguin presented to the British Medical Association, at Cork, the Metric Note No. 7, endorsed by Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, Presidentelect of the A. M. A. After which, on the proposition of Dr. Ernest Hart, Secretary of the Council, the British Medical Association appointed a committee "to report on the means of introducing the Metric System in Medicine in Great Britain." Were appointed: Dr. Clifford Allbutt, of Leeds; Dr. Lauder Brunton, F.R.S., Dr. Sieveking, Professor Frazer, Q.U., Edinburgh; Professor Harvey, University of Aberdeen; Dr. Quain, F.R.S., Chairman of the Pharmacopoeia Committee of the General Medical Council, and Mr. Ernest Hart, Chairman of Council. August 28th. At Montpellier, the Section of Medicine and Surgery of the Société Française pour l'Avancement des Sciences, presided by Dr. Potain, after hearing the Metric Note No. 8, gave a unanimous adhesion to the proposition of supporting the plan of medical and pharmaceutic uniformity before the next International Medical Congress of Amsterdam. September 13th. This plan, whose base is the metric system, was presented at Amsterdam by the committee named ad hoc, at Geneva, and its conclusions adopted were as follows: A. In regard to pharmacy. 1. It is opportune to make an International Pharmacopoeia for the common use of the nations willing to accept it, as has been done in regard to agreementspostal, monetary, and others. 2. The organizers of the Congress may invite a government so disposed, to name delegates who shall act in concert with the Geneva Commission. 3. Said Committee to use the project already accepted by the previous Pharmaceutic Congresses. 4. The questions upon which they will be unable to agree will be reserved for future study. 5. By acting promptly, these International Commissaries will be able to present every two years their report of progress to the Congrès Médical, and to their governments. 6. The Pharmaceutic Society of Paris is invited to communicate its project of International Pharmacopoeia, in order to have it printed among the documents of the Congress, unless said Society prints it promptly. These conclusions were unanimously adopted, as well as those of the Reporter on International Uniformity in Physic, which read as follows: B.-1. The Metric System must be the base of medical uniformity. 2. The scales of all the instruments shall be all metric and uniform. 3. The records of observation in private practice, as well as in hospitals, must be, like the statistic tables, prepared upon a uniform plan, in order to give uniform results. 4. The members of the Congress will be invited to record their cases, as much as possible, by the graphic and numeric methods; to propagate the use of these means of positive observation among their confrères; to communicate to the members of this Committee the critics and improvements experience may suggest, and whose mention will find place in their next report. 5. The Section of Medicine accepts all the conclusions presented by the reporter of the Section of Pharmacy. 6. And demands that the conclusions of both sections be accepted together, as the legacy of the Congress of Geneva to the Congress of Amsterdam. 7. Invite the latter to render to this Committee, by strong and eminent choices, the vitality of which it has been deprived by the abstention of several of its members, by the death of Dr. Wilkinson, Ex-president of the British Medical Association, and by the irreparable loss of Professor Gubler, who was more than a colleague in the Committee, its strength and its head. To satisfy this just demand, the Congress, in general assembly, reorganized the commission charged to present a report at the next session, as follows: MM. Lewis A. Sayre, of New York; Dechambre, of Paris; Ernest Hart, of London; Warlomont, of Brussels; Guye, of Amsterdam; Palasciano, of Naples; E. Seguin, of New York; Gille, of Brussels; and Mehu, of Paris. It would considerably shorten our task to consider it ended by your acceptance of the metric system. But, speaking to one of the most enlightened bodies of physicians, certainly to the most independent, we want to owe your concourse, not to imitation of what is done abroad, but to your own full comprehension of the objective. This objective has so much enlarged since our meeting of Atlanta that, not only the anametric physicians, but those who |