1805. An arrow of from 20 to 24 drop weight (‘N.E.D.’).
The dram was possibly so called from its corresponding to the quentchen, 1/8 of the German Loth or half-ounce (1/16 of a marc) as the drachm was 1/8 of a medicinal ounce.[[24]] Or it may merely have been called a dram as being the part of the ounce, in the same way that the drachm was the next lower part of the apothecaries’ ounce.
3. Scientific and Medicinal Divisions of the Pound
For scientific purposes the pound is considered as of 7000 grains. It may be divided into tenths, hundredths, thousandths; this last division being called a Septem, as = 7 grains. The tenth of this might be called a Septula = 0·7 grain, and the hundredth a Septicent = 0·07 grain. This small weight would be one 100,000th of the gallon, the same proportion as the centigramme to the litre. In analyses of water the solid constituents are usually stated in centigrammes to the litre, or parts in 100,000; and as grains to the gallon or parts in 70,000 they have to be divided by 0·7 to get that ratio. Septicents to the gallon would be the English equivalent of centigrammes to the litre.
An Apothecaries’ Troy ounce lingers in the Board of Trade list of standards, for a permissive use utterly unrequired by medical prescribers or by druggists; the British Pharmacopœia only recognising Imperial weight, the ounce and the grain. For convenience, a weight of 60 grains is called a Drachm, and one of 20 grains is called a Scruple. It is most rare for prescriptions to contain an ounce of any solid medicine; and when an ounce of such a medicine is most exceptionally prescribed, it might be an Imperial ounce, just as ounces of fluid medicines prescribed are Imperial ounces.
4. The Long Hundredweight
The multiples of the pound were originally, like its divisions, in a sexdecimal series, with an alternative series to bring in the hundredweight, i.e. the true Cwt.
| 16 | lb. | 1 stone | ||||
| 16 | stone | 1 wey | = | 256 | lb. | |
| 2 | weys | 1 quarter | = | 500 | lb. | approximately |
| 8 | „ | 1 ton | = | 2000 | lb. | „ |
| 16 | „ | 1 last | = | 4000 | lb. | „ |
The approximative relation of the quarter, strictly speaking of 512 lb., mattered but little, as it applied to corn-measure, in which the measured quarter, 8 bushels, varied from 500 lb. for wheat of 62-1/2 lb. to the bushel, to 512 lb. for heavy wheat of 64 lb. to the bushel. The arrangement was convenient for the corn-trade and could not give rise to fraud; and the main object of all laws on weights and measures should be to prevent fraud, especially in retail trade.
This convenient arrangement was altered in the times of Edward I and Edward III. The former King found the Cwt. of 100 lb. with a quarter of 25 lb. and a sixteenth = 6-1/4 lb. as its nail or clove. In his Acts there is mention of the 100 weight, the 1000 weight, the 2000 weight. But by the Ordinance of Measures 31 Edw. I, 1302, a distractingly obscure statute, no less than three different weights are ordered for the stone: