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About these units
Drop (drop)
The drop is one of the oldest fluid measures and originally referred simply to the amount of liquid that naturally forms at the end of a dripping vessel. Because drop size depends on viscosity, surface tension, temperature, and orifice size, early medicine found drops inconsistent and unreliable. Modern medicine and chemistry sometimes define a drop as 0.05 mL, but this is only a convention used for standardized droppers—real drops can vary significantly. Despite its imprecision, the drop survives in everyday language, aromatherapy, essential oils, and household instructions ("add a few drops"). It exemplifies humanity's earliest attempts to quantify small volumes before scientific instrumentation enabled precise micro-measurement.
Dram (dr)
The fluid dram is a small historical unit equal to 1/8 of a US fluid ounce or 3.6967 mL (US), with slightly different imperial values. It originated in apothecaries and early pharmaceutical texts, where drams measured potent liquid medicines, tinctures, and extracts. In daily life, drams appeared in old cocktail recipes, medicinal syrups, and household remedies. However, the inconsistency between US and UK drams, along with the rise of the metric system, pushed it out of modern use. Today, the dram survives mostly in whiskey culture—where a "dram" informally means a small pour, not a precise measurement—and in historical studies of medicine.