What does "dose" mean?

Dose: A sufficient quantity; a portion; as much as one can take, or as falls to one to receive.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Anything nauseous that one is obliged to take; a disagreeable portion thrust upon one. I am for curing the world by gentle alteratives, not by violent doses. W. Irving. I dare undertake that as fulsome a dose as you give him, he shall readily take it down. South.
  2. 3.To proportion properly (a medicine), with reference to the patient or the disease; to form into suitable doses.
  3. 4.To give doses to; to medicine or physic to; to give potions to, constantly and without need. A self-opinioned physician, worse than his distemper, who shall dose, and bleed, and kill him, "secundum artem." South 3. To give anything nauseous to.

Sources