The Half Decent Pharmaceutical Chemistry Blog

Once upon a time, pharmacists were absolutely proper chemists. They sold substances to cure but, at the same time, they also handled extremely poisonous stuff: the line between pain-killer and killer poison was even more subtle than today.

A pharmacists didn’t handle smart boxes either: huge bottles and vases filled with powders were on the shelves behind the counter, usually covered by a two-plates balance and massive books, and he (because in the past there weren’t female pharmacists) had to prepare anything by himself.

Still, at least in Italy, even nowadays making galenic preparations gives you the opportunity to work as in the glorious days, but, unfortunately, there is something that is slowly but constantly becoming so old-fashioned that even students don’t do anymore. This is the old art of folding powders in dose bags.

One of reasons dose bags are dying out is due to the extremely simplicity of filling capsules: even if you need a small quantity of a substance in each unit, you can fill the rest of the volume with some inactive powder. Not only are capsules easier to make, but the customer will buy something which looks exactly like an industrial product and this, apparently, increases dramatically compliance.

Capsule-making is also much faster than preparing dose bags. 100 capsules are opened, filled and closed at the same time, while you have to weigh the content of EACH dose bag and then you prepare EACH one separately.

So, there you are: dose bags are painfully slow to prepare for the pharmacist but also less practical and good-looking than capsules for patients.

Seldom, however, they are a reliable option: for example, if you need less than 100 or 50 units or, as happened last week, a mother has to administer an oral antibiotic to a baby, who, predictably, can’t swallow tablets or capsules.
So, we decided the only way she could solve such a delicate issue was to pulverize the tablets in a mortar and then equally distribute (spending ages weighing everything) the resulting powder in 27 dose bags.

So, I’ve decided to let images speak for themselves and here is a series of pictures to show (step-by-step) how to make dose bags, using glassine paper (the common weighing paper).

For what concerns the second picture, it must be pointed out that the red arrows indicate you must fold up the paper irregularly, so that, in the end, you will have a smaller bit of weighing paper to fold into the other larger end.
In the end make sure you’ve closed each bag perfectly, shaking them on your hand: no speck of powder must come out.

Now, enjoy yourself with handmade glassine paper dose bags: do not let this ancient art die!