Units of Measure

 In An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System, a passage stopped me for a moment:

... Dr. Lambert drained 65 cubic centimeters of fluid from her left knee (about 65 teaspoons).

First, I thought this unhelpful. I know from cooking the size of a teaspoon, but seldom have reason to measure out more than one or two of them--how much room do 65 take? Second, a bit of calculation suggested that something was wrong. Sixty-five is about a sixteenth of 1000; a cubic centimeter is equivalent to a milliliter, and a quart is a bit less than a liter: so 65 milliliters are a bit more than a sixteenth of a quart, two ounces or a quarter of a cup. A teaspoon is a third of a tablespoon; four tablespoons make a quarter cup; 65 teaspoons ought to be a bit more than a cup and a quarter. It appears that the author simply forgot to apply a factor of five: five milliliters make a teaspoon, so one gets 13 teaspoons, 4.3 tablespoons, or a quarter cup and a bit.

All of this assumes that the measure in cubic centimeters is correct. In the kitchen, a quarter cup is small, but in the knee it might be conspicuous and inconvenient. I infer that we are supposed to be impressed by the amount. I have no desire to find out by experience.