It is often used in giving quantities of liquid drugs to patients, and occasionally in cooking and in organic synthesis.
[1] Several exact definitions exist: In organic synthesis, a synthetic procedure will often call for the addition of a reagent "dropwise" with the aid of a syringe or a dropping funnel.
To improve reproducibility, experimental procedures also note the total amount of time required to add the liquid or another measure of addition rate.
In a related usage, the amount of a reagent, whose precise quantity is unimportant, will sometimes be given in terms of the number of drops, often from a glass pipette.
In the first decade of the 19th century, the minim, the smallest unit of Apothecary Measure, was promoted by the pharmaceutical and medical establishments as an alternative to the drop.