Does Kevin T. Keith realize that it’s creepy, in a kind of Nixon/Kissinger way, to talk about himself in the third person?
He does. Silly name for a blog. Yeah, well . . . I was trying to come up with something that referenced both healthcare and ethics, discarding – by popular request – numerous Latin puns (including, sadly, many clever variations on “ars longa”), when I happened on a description of Medieval apothecaries’ symbols. These notations, used in early medical prescriptions and formularies, were the foundation for the specialized symbols and abbreviations used by doctors and pharmacists today. Apothecaries used specialized weights and measures for the tiny amounts of material employed in medicine formulations. Apothecary weights included the “dram” (or “drachm”), “scruple”, and “grain” – representing, respectively, 1/8 troy ounce, 1/3 dram, and 1/20 scruple (thus, a scruple was also 1/24 troy ounce, and a grain was 1/60 dram or 1/480 troy ounce). Each of these weights was notated with a particular symbol; the symbol for the “scruple” is: It occurred to me immediately that “scruple” has also taken
