Apothecaries' System - Romance Countries

Romance Countries

While there will naturally have been some changes throughout the centuries, this section only tries to give a general overview over the situation that was recorded in detail in numerous 19th century merchants' handbooks.

Iberian Peninsula

On the Iberian Peninsula, apothecaries' weights in the 19th century were relatively uniform, with 24 grains per scruple (576 grains per ounce), the standard in Romance countries. The weight of an apothecaries' pound was 345.1 g in Spain and 344.2 g in Portugal. As in Italy, some of the additional subdivisions of the Roman system, such as the obolo, were still in use there. It was standard to use the marco, defined as 8 ounces, instead of the pound.

France

In 18th century France, there was a national weight standard, the marc de Paris of 8 ounces. The civil pound of 16 ounces was equivalent to 2 marks, and it was also used as the apothecaries' pound. With 30.6 g, the ounces were considerably heavier than other apothecaries' ounces in Romance countries, but otherwise the French system was not remarkable. Its history and connections to the English and Flemish standards are discussed below under Weight standards named after Troyes.

Italy

Due in part to the political conditions in what would become a united Kingdom of Italy only in 1861, the variation of apothecaries' systems and standard weights in this region was enormous. (For background information, see History of Italy during foreign domination and the unification.) The libbra (pound) generally consisted of the standard twelve ounces, however.

The civil weight systems were generally very similar to the apothecaries' system, and since the libbra (or the libbra sottile, where different systems were in use for light and heavy goods) generally had a suitable weight for an apothecaries' pound it was often used for this purpose. Extreme cases were Rome and Genoa, where the same system was used for everything, including medicine. On the other hand there were relatively large differences even between two cities in the same state. E.g. Bologna (in the Papal States) had an apothecaries' pound that was less than the local civil pound, and 4% lighter than the pound used in Rome.

The weight of an apothecaries' pound ranged generally between 300 g and 320 g, slightly less than that of a pound in the Roman Empire. An important exception to this rule is that the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia was under rule of the Habsburg monarchy 1814–1859 and therefore had the extremely large Habsburg apothecaries' pound of 420 g. (See below under Habsburg standard.) E.g. in the large city of Milan the apothecaries' system based on a pound of 326.8 g was officially replaced by the metric system as early as 1803, because Milan was part of the Napoleonic Italian Republic. Since the successor of this little state, the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, fell to Habsburg in 1814 (at a time when even in France the système usuel had been introduced because the metric system was not accepted by the population), an apothecaries' system was officially introduced again, but now based on the Habsburg apothecaries' pound, which weighed almost 30% more.

The apothecaries' pound in Venice had exactly the same subdivisions as those in the non-Romance countries, but its total weight of 301 g was at the bottom of the range. During the Habsburg reign of 1814–1859 an exception was made for Venice; as a result the extreme weights of 301 g and 420 g coexisted within one state and in immediate proximity. The Venice standard was also used elsewhere, for example in Udine. In Dubrovnik (called "Ragusa" until 1909) its use was partially continued for a long time in spite of the official Habsburg weight reform.

The measure and weight systems for the large mainland part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were unified in 1840. The area consisted of the southern half of the Italian Peninsula and included Naples and Salerno. The subdivision of apothecaries' weight in the unified system was essentially the same as that for gold, silver, coins and silk. It was the most excentric variant in that the ounce was divided in 10 drachms, rather than the usual 8. The scruple, like in Venice but unlike in the rest of the Romance region, was divided into 20 grains. The existence of a unit called aureo, the equivalent of 1½ dramme, is interesting because 6 aurei were 9 dramme. In the original Salerno weight system an ounce was divided into 9 drachms, and so an aureo would have been ⅙ of an ounce.