In the Middle Ages the Imperial Free City of Nuremberg, an important trading place in the south of Germany, produced large amounts of nesting weight pieces to various European standards. In the 1540s, the first pharmacopoeia in the modern sense was also printed there. In 1555, a weight standard for the apothecaries pound of 12 ounces was set in Nuremberg. Under the name Nuremberg pharmaceutical weight' () it would become the standard for most of the north-east of Europe. However, some cities kept local copies of the standard.
As of 1800 all German states and cities except Lübeck (which had the Dutch troy standard) followed the Nuremberg standard. It was also the standard for Denmark, Norway, the Russian Empire, and most cantons of Switzerland. Poland and Sweden had their own variants of the standard, which differed from each other by 0.6%.
In 1811, Bavaria legally defined the apothecaries pound as 360.00 g (an ounce of 30.00 g). In 1815, Nuremberg lost its status as a free city and became part of Bavaria. From now on the Nuremberg apothecaries pound was no longer the official apothecaries pound in Nuremberg; but the difference was only 0.6%. In 1836 the Greek apothecaries pound was officially defined by this standard, four years after Otto, the son of the king of Bavaria, became the first king of Greece. But only few German states followed the example of Bavaria, and with a long delay. The apothecaries' pound of 360 g was also adopted in Lübeck, where it was official as of 1861.
Austria and the states of the Habsburg monarchy officially had a different standard since 1761, and Prussia, followed by its neighbours Anhalt, Lippe and Mecklenburg, would diverge in the opposite direction with a reform in 1816. But in both cases apothecaries continued to use the Nuremberg standard unofficially for a long time after it became illegal.
In Russia the apothecaries' system survived well into the 20th century. The Soviet Union officially abolished it only in January 1927.