Homeopathic drugs complementary, antidotal and inimical to Nux vomica produce stronger anti-alcoholic effect on toads than Nux.

Background: In homeopathy some drugs are known to act as complementary, antidotal or inimical to a particular drug. Practitioners can follow this rule when they apply one drug following another. Potentized Nux vomica can reduce acute hypnotic effect of alcohol on toads. Sulphur and Sepia are reported to be complementary to Nux-vom, while Coffea cruda and Zincum met are antidotal and inimical to Nux, respectively .The four drugs have been tested on the toad model to find out their actual therapeutic relationship with Nux vom. Objective: To verify the complementary effect of Sulphur and Sepia, antidotal effect of Coffea and inimical effect of Zincum in relation to Nux vom in the toad model. Methods: Five batches of toads, each comprising 20 individuals, were treated by partial immersion in a drug diluted with distilled water 1:500 for 20 min. The control consisted of 90% ethanol diluted with distilled water 1:500. The drugs were Nux vom 200 CH, Sulphur 200 CH, Sepia 200 CH, Coffea 200 CH and Zincum 200 CH. Toads of each batch were separately exposed to 260mM ethanol solution and tested every 10 min to see if they had lost their righting reflex (RR). For this, each toad was laid on its dorsal surface. If it failed to turn on its ventrum in a cut-off time of 60 sec it was considered to have lost its RR. Four more batches of toads were pretreated with Nux vom 200 CH and subsequently treated separately by Sulphur 200 CH, Sepia 200 CH, Coffea 200 CH and Zincum 200 CH. All the toads were then exposed to 260 mM ethanol solution to record their tolerance to ethanol anesthesia in terms of time to lose RR. Results: Toads treated with the five drugs took significantly longer time (P