Talk:Apothecaries' system

message: What are those numbers after the nbsps in the table?  We should either have a proper column for them, or zap 'em altogether. -- John Fader 01:08, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In international style, groups of three numbers are often separated by spaces instead of commas, because in most countries the comma is used as the decimal point instead of the period: 1,234 can be misinterpreted as one and two hundred thirty-four thousandths instead of one thousand two hundred thirty-four.  However, Wikipedia's style guide says to use a comma as a thousands separator, so I have edited the article to conform. Indefatigable 02:39, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally I'd have nothing there (i.e. no space or comma) but the MoS trumps me, I guess.  I was mostly confused because it was in a table, and I was worried that this was a mysterious fourth column that had become misplaced.  It's much clearer now; thanks for solving the mystery for me. -- John Fader 03:12, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The mysterious numbers

message: I'm confused by the numbers -- in keeping with the rest of the site, numbers like 373.241,72 should be written as 373,241.72, shouldn't it? Or is the thousands separator actually being used in the decimal place, so the number really is 373241.72? It's a bit confusing.
:In accordance with the manual of style, the article uses periods (full stops) as decimal points and commas as thousands separators -- an apothecaries' pound is about 373 g. Sorry, I don't see how it's confusing.  Could you elaborate? Indefatigable 13:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I can see where this question is coming from. In the US (and others), thousands are separated with commas and decimals are separated with dots. In Europe, the opposite is true. According to ISO 31-0, commas and dots should be reserved for decimals; spaces should be used to separate thousand groups. aszymanik speak! 05:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but I believe it's no longer relevant to this article. --Hans Adler (talk) 07:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comma/decimals in numbers 

message: It could be noted that the size of the unit varied by country, and was largely displaced by the Metric System in Europe.  By "Muret Sanders enzyklopädisches Wörterbuch der Englischen und Reutschen Sprache" [1900] gives the units proportionally in ratio, the pounds being <BR>
350.78325 g Prussia, Meklenberg, Hanover, Saxony, Weimer (= 12/16 Prussian pound <BR>
357.6476 g In Wutenberg 
357.6639 g in  Kursland 
357.8538 g in Nuremburg and a great part of Germany <BR>
360.0000 g in Baden and Lubeck  (based on metric units) <BR>
375.0000 g in Switzerland and Bavaria (based on 12/16 pound, pound = 500 g)<BR>
420.0450 g in Austria (12/16 Pfund; all their weight units are 6/5 of the Hansiatic pound)<BR>
In Russia, the pound was 8064 doli, or 7/8 of the funt, translates as 358.3236125 g.
Wendy.krieger 11:05, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other Apothecaries' systems 

message: The article only dealt with the weight system in English speaking countries and the Imperial measure system in England (which was not the same as that in the US). It also ignored the history of the system. I corrected these things in my sandbox, and got a bit carried away. The result is essentially a comprehensive new article. I hope it's comprehensible in spite of the wealth of information,. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:15, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  New version of the article 

message: Please note what the SI system page says about writing style; SI unit symbols are written in upright Roman so as to differentiate from variables. On this page there are several instances of g and kg. As far as I can tell there is little risk of ambiguity between the legacy units and their SI definitions, so the SI symbols would be better written g and kg.
91.154.83.153 (talk) 07:08, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  On keeping a consistent SI writing style 

message: I am not sure how proper it is for me to "peer review" my own work, so I am putting my thoughts here instead.
* There is a lack of inline citations. When I started writing this article I knew next to nothing about this subject, and I am sure that every single claim in this article can be sourced to one or more of the sources that appear as inline references elsewhere. The problem is to find out which, in each particular case. I guess that bringing the density of inline citations to FA level would take about half as long as writing the article did – which is a lot more than I am going to spend on such a boring task. 
* Apart from the book "Weights and Measures in Scotland", all sources I used are available online. Unfortunately I made (and had to make) heavy use of sources in German.
* What I could not find, and what is therefore missing as a reference in the article, is anything like a general overview over the development of apothecaries' weights in Europe. I could not even find an overview over the history of European weights and measurements in general, or even just in a particular country. In order to talk about the topic I had to make decisions about what is important enough to be mentioned, and what is irrelevant.
* I suspect that more is known about the early history, including the Salerno system and its relation to the Roman and Arabic systems. But I couldn't find this information.
* When a scruple is divided into 20 grains, they are traditionally called barley grains; when into 24 grains they are traditionally called wheat grains. There is a widespread belief that this is related to the actual average (in whatever sense) weights of these plant grains, and that the carat is related to the actual average weight of a carob seed, to the extent that physical seeds were sometimes, perhaps even originally when the standard was defined, used to weigh things. There is no evidence that this is true, and I suspect it is as mythical as the idea that the unit called "the King's foot" changed when there was a new king. (IIRC this is close to R.D. Connor's opinion in "Weights and Measures in Scotland".) There is no clear evidence either way, so I left the discussion out. (This is of course more relevant to some other mass unit articles than to this article.)
* I still consider submitting a version of this article to a scholarly journal, to solve the sourcing problems. :D
--Hans Adler (talk) 22:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I subbed the symbols. Both dram and minim were wrong. Just checked on IE, and they *still* can't display basic symbols! (Why does anybody use IE?) I'll add in the  template. — kwami (talk) 00:28, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! Hans Adler 07:34, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Instead of a peer review 

message: Here's a curiosity: the symbols for pound (℔) and drachm (ℨ) seem to be missing from Lucida Grande boldface, so they appear in the body of the table but not its head. —Tamfang (talk) 20:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  font problem 

message: The symbol for dram didn't look right (although it looked fine in edit mode) so I changed it, but only in the first table.
Bear in mind that I grew up with these symbols, so I think I know what they are supposed to look like.
Maybe this is a browser issue, but the symbol for dram should be in the same style as the ounce symbol. For example, the top stroke should be straight and horizontal. The next stroke should also be straight, but diagonal.
Apothecaries' symbols commonly found in medical recipes
Text Creation Partnership Character Entity List (on this website, do a search on dram.)
Zyxwv99 (talk) 21:16, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's hard to tell with the inconsistency between various fonts, but I think you are right. THanks. Hans Adler 21:35, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Symbols 

message: * some discussion of pharmaceutical Latin (or apothecaries' Latin) -- at some point I'd like to write an article about it, but articles often get spun off from sections, so maybe it could start here.
Supplemental units:
* gallon (congius), apothecaries' wine gallon etc.
* tumblerful / coffeecupful - half-pint
* teacupful - quarter-pint
* cyathus (wineglass or wineglassfull) - 1/8 pint - I've added something about this to the article on wineglass
Before 1700
* cochleare - spoon (1/2 fluid ounce)
After 1700
* tablespoon and teaspoon (1/2 ounce and 1 dram respectively)
* dessertspoon - 2 drams, part of a 3-spoon system with the two above-menioned
* baby spoon and large spoon - part of a 5-spoon system
discussion of minim vs. drop
Zyxwv99 (talk) 03:23, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  To Do List 

message: Weights: UK (Imperial) and US
Weight(symbol)   	pound(℔)	ounce(℥)	dra(ch)m(ʒ)	scruple(℈)	grain(gr.)
pound            	1       	12      	96         	288       	5760
ounce            	        	1       	8          	24        	480
dra(ch)m         	        	        	1          	3         	60
scruple          	        	        	           	1         	20
metric equivalent	373 g   	31.1 g  	3.89 g     	1.296 g   	64.8 mg
The conversion tables threw me for quite a while. 
I know the first one reads "1 ℔ is equivalent to 12 ℥ which is also 96 ʒ, 288 ℈ and 5760 gr." and so on, but it's hard to follow. 
Personally, I think something more along the lines of this table would be more suited to purpose. I also changed the first cell in the example to read "Weight (symbol)" as the majority fall into that category as opposed to abbreviation. 
I'm no expert though. Tomásdearg92 (talk) 22:43, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conversion tables are a bit obscure 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Apothecaries' system. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070809121753/http://www.pharmacy.wisc.edu/aihp/AC/AC10.pdf to http://www.pharmacy.wisc.edu/aihp/AC/AC10.pdf
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 14:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Greetings, someone recently suggested that Apothecaries' ounce should be merged into this article. Was wondering everyone's thoughts on the matter. I support it personally. Zell Faze (talk) 02:20, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Support merging. Ethanbas (talk) 02:05, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging articles 

message: Referring to the subsection ‘Weight standards named after Troyes’, the 20th part of the ounce (whether troy, market or weigh-house) was in Dutch called engels, in the singular, the plural was engelsen. (Engels litterally means ‘English’, as it was inspired by the English pennyweight. The French name for the 20th of an oune was esterlin, which is likewise etymologically related to ‘(penny) sterling’.)
The 32nd part of the engels was in Dutch called aas in the singular, plural azen. The form assen used in the text (and presumably in the cited sources) can only ultimately derive from a German source. In Dutch it can only be the plural of as, meaning ‘axle’ or ‘ash’ (of a fire, not the tree). Exceptionally, as can mean the Roman weight or coin, but then it is not used in the plural.
The term ‘Flemish’ is used rather confusingly in the subsection. Amsterdam is included in a list with “other Flemish cities”, but certainly never was in Flanders, neither in the ancient sense (the medieval and early modern County) nor in the modern (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium). Antwerp only is Flemish in the modern, not in the ancient sense; and the latter is the one appropriate to the implied time frame of before the French Revolution, the wikilink to the modern sense is therefor not appropriate either.
Although the trooisch gewicht was in intention the same in Flanders, Brabant and Holland, as they all descended from the troy weight as prescribed by the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers of the Low Countries for the coinage and the trade in precious metals in their territories in order to maintain uniformity in coinage, they were controlled independently in each town and bailiwick, usually with separate standards. In the province of Holland, however, the inspector of troy weight (“IJkmeester van den Trooischen Gewichte”) of Amsterdam was appointed by the States of Holland as inspector of troy weight for the whole province, so that troy weight was the same in the whole province. The Earl of Leicester, ‘provided’ by Queen Elizabeth I as a governor for the United Provinces, in his efforts to control the coinage of the United Provinces centrally again, appointed the inspector of troy weight for Holland as inspector-general for the whole Union, but this did not last. Nevertheless, during the existence of the United Provinces the troy weight of Holland, effectively that of Amsterdam, was dominant in the Union, and traders in precious metals from other provinces sometimes went to the inspector at Amsterdam voluntarily. This Holland troy weight (“Hollandsch Trooisch Gewicht”), incidentally, used a pound of 2 troy marks or 16 troy ounces, instead of the 12 ounces usual elsewhere.
The French client states that replaced the United Provinces (the Batavian Republic, the Batavian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Holland) tried to introduce the metric system, but stumbled over practical difficulties. In an interim effort to establish unity in weights, the Batavian Republic imposed the Holland troy weight for precious stones and metals and the Amsterdam weigh-house weight {“Amsterdamsch Waag-gewicht”) for other wares across the board. In the meantime the southern Netherlands (the later Belgium) were annexed to France, that imposed first the metric system (rather ineffectively) and then the mesures usuelles. When in 1810 the Kingdom of Holland was also annexed by the French Empire, the mesures usuelles were likewise imposed, but when independence was re-established as the Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands the previous interim returned. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands, legally continuing from the Sovereign Principality but also including the southern provinces, definitively established metric weight in 1820. In the five years (or seven years in the north, counting the Sovereign Principality) before that, the existing situation was maintained, i.e. in the northern provinces Holland troy weight and Amsterdam weigh-house weight, in the southern provinces the mesures usuelles. To say that the Kingdom used “Flemish troy weight” is therefor at best confusing.
All this time the apothecaries’ weight (called medicinaal gewicht, ‘medicinal weight’) was left to the guilds of apothecaries and surgeons, usually using a pound of 12 ounces (troy, in intention) subdivided in the usual way in drams, scruples and grains. But when the Kingdom of the Netherlands adopted metric weight in 1820, a special “metrical” medicinal weight was introduced with a pound of 375 g (⅜ kg) subdivided in the old usual way. This was abolished in favour of full application of the metric weight in 1870.
I have not changed anything in the article, as I don’t quite know what would be appropriate to include under its scope, but more importantly as I do not have my sources (mainly the book on old Dutch weights, Oude Nederlandse Gewichten by Zevenboom and Wittop Koning, and the Grote Winkler Prins Encyclopedie, 1972–75 edition) readily available to cite at present. — Mithrennaith (talk) 03:45, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with Dutch (language and weights)