The Half Decent Pharmaceutical Chemistry Blog

The best thing about working at the chemist’s (in the lab) is that, what you make, is sold directly to costumers. As I previously outlined, people hand you a recipe, written by a doctor, and it’s your duty not only to prepare it, but also to choose the most practical packaging and to calculate the overall price.
Most of the time the last step is the longest: the making of Bach flower remedies, for example, takes no time. Not to mention when you simply have to weigh 200 g of vitamin C.

Fortunately, however, there are galenic preparations that require more work and skills. In these instances, the employee of the chemist’s is always happy as such time-consuming jobs can be handed over to the student.

Last Friday was a very relaxed and laid-back day: the bride dropped in to give the guests some information about the ceremony and it was another employee’s birthday. So, the lab looked even more like a kitchen.

My task for the day, though, was not that relaxing: I had to prepare an ointment. Actually not ANY ointment, but one of the densest you could possibly make.
From a pharmacological point of view, this topical preparation was all but complicate: zinc oxide and rice starch were the important ingredients. The main problem, when it comes to crafting an ointment with high zinc oxide content, is to make sure there aren’t clots. Pharmaceutical industries use a variety of machines to make topical drugs, but the tools employed for hand-made salve is certainly easier: a marble platform and a pair of spatulas.

This means you have to get rid of the clots manually, spending energy and time pressing and spreading the salve with the spatula.
According to the recipe, 400 g of ointment must contain: 100 g of zinc oxide, 100 of rice starch, 40 g of almond oil and, as vehicle, 160 g of Vaseline (the solid one, also known as white petrolatum).

Hmm, terribly viscous and dense. The customer, besides, who regularly buys this galenic preparation, asked if we could make it softer this time, so that it was easier to spread on the skin. This being the first time it was me the person in charge of prepare it, I tried a rather banal but, weirdly never tried before, of the 160 g of Vaseline, 10 g were paraffin oil which not only would have made my work easier, but also increased the fluidity of the ointment.
This kind of customisation is allowed, because they don’t regard the active substances, but only the excipients.

I split the 400 g in two halves, mixed 50 g of zinc oxide with an equal amount of micronized starch and weighed 80 g of Vaseline.
The mixed powder had to be added little by little: the salve, meanwhile, is vigorously spread each time. The almond oil, besides giving a nice scent to the ointment, helps a bit, especially if poured on the mixture every so often, increasing the fluidity.

In the end, thanks to the paraffin oil, the ointment looked great with no clot whatsoever.
Do not think it was an easy or quick one, though: to yield such a good result it took me almost two hours and some calories. But, you know, it’s always better than tiding up drawers and I could eat something whenever I wanted.

Finally it was time to calculate how much the salve was: although there’s no working hours-price correlation, this was the most expensive galenic preparation I’ve ever made as it cost 16.72 €, which is more than industrially made zinc oxide salve.

Beautifully crafted goods are always unique and more expensive.

This blog might have been on holiday for 20 days, but I’m happy to see the readers are back leaving their comments to my posts again. No doubt the debut of “At the Chemist’s” has showed a certain interest in the fact that you can buy “home-made” Bach flower remedies at a chemist’s shop. Many raised their eyebrows as they saw this picture.

Let’s begin with the main question: yes, I do confess I have prepared B.F.R.’s and I’m sure more will be done before the end of the internship. Do I feel sorry? Not at all, as I don’t feel sorry for losers who want to commit suicide using benzodiazepines and look for information on my blog.

So far I’ve prepared 3 Bach flowers remedies. People come to the chemist’s with their prescription and my job is to make what their doctor wrote. So I guess we can draw some conclusions regarding some doctors’ mental health. By the way, as I’m not interested in working at a chemist’s shop, I don’t care what kind of drug a medical doctor asks me to make for someone: it’s not a case of “Oh Lord, I want to HELP people and I’m going to do anything to complete my mission!”. If that were the case, I’d have become a bloody medical doctor and cured people in some remote land where the poor can’t afford medications (like, say, the United State of America).
I just try to enjoy myself as much as I can before beginning my thesis, looking for material for this blog (as I’m doing right now). Who cares about people who are not my readers?

Bach flowers remedies, strictly speaking, can’t be considered homeopathic cures, as the idea behind them are quite different (a post about homeopathy is to come out soon). Both, anyhow, aren’t supported by any scientific proof, so they deserve to be suspiciously considered as well as religions (with the difference that some religions might be interestingly interpreted as philosophies).

Like most of galenic preparations, B.F.R.’s are very, very, very easy to make: water, cheap brandy you shouldn’t offer to anyone and flower extracts are the only ingredients. The resulting solution is generally orally administered as drops. Through the powers of flowers, they could be used to treat pretty much all kind of emotional problem: anxiety, depression, panic attacks, etc.
Many flowers and plants, in general, have undoubtedly curative powers, given the massive number of therapeutic substances they have. So I’m not saying, by any means, that phytotherapy is rubbish or that people who insist on rely solely on natural drugs are stupid. They are just freaks but, hey, what’s wrong with that?

It is when it comes to adding the flower extract to the hydro-alcoholic solution that things start to get suspicious: only three drops of each extract has to be dropped. This implies that, although once I had to use five different extracts, whatever active molecule the flower presents, you’ll always end up with an incredibly diluted solution. As a result, when the patient actually takes the drug, it’s nothing but diluted cheap brandy in a funny, amber glass bottle with a dropper (which I’m pretty confident costs more than its content).

It’s in the end, though, that you finally realise what kind of thing Back flower remedies are. The girl who gave me the instruction the first time told me I had to make sure, in the end, to shake the bottle 15-times because, at this point she felt the need to quote what the B.F.R.’s guru of the shop had said to her (a guy I haven’t had the pleasure to meet yet), “That’s the only number that can activate the substances!”

She couldn’t help smiling (apologetically), too.

P.S: If you hasn't got the title of the post, you know nothing about Paul Mazzolini and the Italian discomusic in the 80s.

So, here we are: to kick things off, a picture of the chemist’s shop where I am going to spend most of my time until mid-November.

Located on the Bolognese hills, Pianoro used to be considered an ideal place for middle-aged, rich and annoyed bourgeois who get sick of the restless, urban life-style: nice houses with small but predictably well-kept gardens. At least, this happened in the past: today, what wasn’t much more than a village, has been virtually turned into a so-called satellite town.

More people, including immigrants, live here these days an so a huge pharmacy is needed. Fortunately, this means that not only is the commercial part big, but also the lab where I work is considerably well-equipped.
The chemicals are certainly not harmful and kept on kitchen-like shelves, but you can use brandy for Bach flowers remedies.

This is also likely to be the first and only lab where you don’t have to wash glassware: everything is placed in a sink and a cleaning-lady do the washing-up.

As part of my internship, however, I don’t prepare just a few products on a daily basis: this week, for example, I’ve spent half of my working days helping reorder all the drawers. Actually I can do anything but selling drugs: according to the Italian laws, only those who graduate in Pharmacy and pass a state exam have the right to do it.

To sum up, there’s always plenty to do, although I won’t be on any given day from now on there, but I am going to write many posts describing the drugs I’ll manufacture with my own hands for the locals. There’s always something to do.
Stay tuned.