Apothecaries' Weights and Measures Signs
It is not possible to ascertain with certainty the origin of the familiar signs , ], , used in formulas and prescriptions to represent the scruple, drachm, and ounce respectively. A few guesses may be quoted, but actual historic evidence is not available.
Dr. C. Rice, New York, an accomplished scholar and pharmaceutical authority, supposed that the scruple sign was a slightly modified form of the Greek gamma, [Greek: g], the first letter of "gramma," the nearest Greek equivalent weight, and the original of the modern gramme. The same author associated the ounce sign with the Greek x, [Greek: x], which was certainly used in ancient times, often with a tiny 0 against it, thus, [Greek: x°], to represent the "oxybaphon," or vinegar vessel, which became a fluid measure equal to about 15 fluid drachms. There is some evidence that the same sign was used for the later Greek (or Sicilian) ungia, Latin uncia, the original of our ounce. The oxybaphon, it may be added, was translated into Latin "acetabulum," which was also a vinegar vessel and a measure.
It has been guessed that the scruple sign may have been a slurred Greek [Greek: s], written thus, [Greek: s] (see Dr. Wall's "Prescription," published at St. Louis, 1888). Apuleius, who wrote in the second century, gives as a sign for an obolus which was equal to about 14 grains. That symbol could easily have drifted into our . Hermann Schelenz ("Geschichte der Pharmacie," 1904, page 153) makes up a table of medicinal weights and measures from Celsus, Pliny, and Galen, and quotes the following signs as being then used: ~, sextans or obolus; ,
