Apothecaries' system measure precious metals and stones. (The troy pound was already declared illegal for most other uses by the Weights and Measures Act of 1878.) In the US, the metric system replaced the apothecaries' system in the United States Pharmacopoeia of 1971. Apothecaries' system The apothecaries' system or apothecaries' weights and measures is a historical system of mass and volume units that were used by physicians and apothecaries for medical recipes, and also sometimes by scientists. The English version of the system is closely related to the English troy system of weights, the pound and grain being exactly the same in
Precious coral Precious coral Precious coral, or red coral, is the common name given to a genus of marine corals, Corallium. The distinguishing characteristic of precious corals is their durable and intensely colored red or pink-orange skeleton, which is used for making jewelery. Red corals grow on rocky seabottom with low sedimentation, typically in dark environments—either in the depths or in dark caverns or crevices. The original species, "C. rubrum" (formerly "Gorgonia nobilis"), is found mainly in the Mediterranean Sea. It grows at depths from 10 to 300 meters below sea level, although the shallower of these habitats have been largely depleted