Grams to Apothecaries' Drams (g to ʒ)

1 gram equals 0.2572059725 apothecaries' drams (rounded).

1 gram = 0.2572059725 apothecaries' drams

How to convert grams to apothecaries' drams

To convert grams to apothecaries' drams, multiply the number of grams by 0.2572059725. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply apothecaries' drams by 3.8879346.

apothecaries' drams = grams × 0.2572059725

Example: 10 grams = 2.572059725 apothecaries' drams.

About these units

Gram (g)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a kilogram. The standard unit for food quantities and small objects.

A gram was once defined as a small drop of the natural world. The French National Convention of 1795 set it as the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube one hundredth of a metre on each side, a cubic centimetre. The reference temperature was first the melting point of ice and was later changed to the temperature of maximum density of water, about 4 degrees Celsius. The word came into French as gramme, from Late Latin gramma, itself from the Greek for a letter or small mark; in Late Antiquity it meant about one twenty-fourth of an ounce.

The gram was the base unit of mass in the centimetre-gram-second system, but in 1960 the SI took the kilogram as its base unit, which made the gram one thousandth of it. That is why it appears in so many everyday places: it is the standard for non-liquid ingredients in cooking and shopping, and nutrition labels commonly list contents per 100 g. For a sense of scale, a small paper clip or a pen cap weighs about a gram, and a Japanese 1-yen coin is close to exactly that, while a US penny is around 2.5 g.

1 gram = 0.001 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Gram; Wikipedia: Kilogram

Apothecaries' Dram (ʒ)

Troy & apothecaries'Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

60 grains or 3 scruples (3.888 g). Used in old medical prescriptions.

Greek drachma coins left their mark on this unit, which the apothecaries' tables spelled drachm or dram and abbreviated with a curled symbol. It was worth 60 grains, or three scruples, or about 3.89 grams, and eight of them filled an apothecaries' ounce.

Doctors wrote it into Latin prescriptions with Roman numerals, so three drams appeared as the symbol followed by iij and half a dram as the symbol followed by ss, short for semis. Until about 1900 most prescriptions were written this way.

Do not confuse it with the avoirdupois dram, which is much smaller than this one, and with the fluid dram used for liquids. An Irish pharmacopoeia of 1850 even proposed an avoirdupois-based version of about 54.68 grains. British law ended the apothecaries' system in the 1970s, and modern doses are given in grams or milligrams.

1 apothecaries' dram = 0.0038879346 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Apothecaries' system; Wikipedia: Troy weight

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