Part 28

Onions, when eaten at night by those who are not feverish, will promote sleep, and induce perspiration. The late Frank Buckland confirmed this statement. He said, "I am sure the essential oil of Onions has soporific powers. In my own case it never fails. If I am much pressed with work, and feel that I am not disposed to sleep, I eat two or three small Onions, and the effect is magical." The Onion has a very sensitive organism, and absorbs all morbid matter that comes in its way. During our last epidemic of cholera it puzzled the sanitary inspectors of a northern town why the tenants of one cottage in an infected row were not touched by the plague. At last some one noticed a net of onions hanging in the fortunate house, and on examination all these proved to have become diseased. But whilst welcoming this protective quality, the danger must be remembered of eating an onion which shows signs of decay, for it cannot be told what may have caused this distemper.

When sliced, and applied externally, the raw Onion serves by its pungent and essential oil to quicken the circulation, and to redden the skin of the particular surface treated in this way; very usefully so in the case of an unbroken chilblain, or to counteract neuralgic pain; but in its crude state the bulb is not emollient or demulcent. If employed as a poultice for ear-ache, or broken chilblains, the Onion should be roasted, so as to modify its acrid oil. When there is a constant arid painful discharge of fetid matter from the ear, or where an abscess is threatened, with pain, heat, and swelling, a hot poultice of roasted Onions will be found very useful, and will mitigate the pain. The juice of a sliced raw Onion is alkaline, and will quickly relieve the acid venom of a sting from a wasp, or bee, if applied immediately to the part.

A tincture is made (H.) from large, red, strong Onions for medicinal purposes. As a warming expectorant in chronic bronchitis, or asthma, or for a cold which is not of a feverish character, from half to one teaspoonful of this tincture may be given with benefit three or four times in the day in a wineglassful of hot water, or hot milk. Likewise, a jorum (i.e., an earthen bowl) of hot Onion broth taken at bedtime, serves admirably to soothe the air passages, and to promote perspiration; after the first feverish stage of catarrh or influenza has passed by. To make this, peel a large Spanish Onion, and divide it into four parts; then put them into a saucepan, with half a saltspoonful of salt, and two ounces of butter, and a pint of cold water; let them simmer gently until quite tender; next pour all into a bowl which has been made hot, dredging a little pepper over; and let the porridge be eaten as hot as it can be taken.

The allyl and sulphur in the bulbs, together with their mucilaginous parts, relieve the sore mucous membranes, and quicken perspiration, whilst other medicinal virtues are exercised at the same time on the animal economy.

By eating a few raw parsley sprigs immediately afterwards, the strong smell which onions communicates to the breath may be removed and dispelled. Lord Bacon averred "the rose will be sweeter if planted in a bed of onions." So nutritious does the Highlander find this vegetable, that, if having a few raw bulbs in his pocket, with oat-cake, or a crust of bread, he can travel for two or three days together without any other food. Dean Swift said:--

"This is every cook's opinion, No savoury dish without an onion, But lest your kissing should be spoiled, Your onions must be fully boiled."

Provings have been made by medical experts of the ordinary red Onion in order to ascertain what its toxical effects are when pushed to an excessive degree, and it has been found that Onions, Leeks, or Garlic, when taken immoderately, induce melancholy and depression, with severe catarrh. They dispose to sopor, lethargy, and even insanity. The immediate symptoms are extreme watering of the eyes after frequent sneezing, confusion of the head, and heavy defluxion from the nose, with pains in the throat extending to the ears; in a word, all the accompaniments of a bad cold, sneezings, lacrymation, pains in the forehead, and a hoarse, hacking cough. These being the effects of taking Onions in a harmful quantity, it is easy to understand that when the like morbid symptoms have arisen spontaneously from other causes, as from a sharp catarrh of the head and chest, then modified forms of the Onion are calculated to counteract them on the law of similars, so that a cure is promptly produced. On which principle the Onion porridge is a scientific remedy, as food, and as Physic, during the first progress of a catarrhal attack, and pari passu the medicinal tincture of the red Onion may be likewise curatively given.

Spanish Onions, which are imported into this country in the winter, are sweet and mucilaginous. A peasant in Spain will munch an onion just as an English labourer eats an apple.

At the present day Egyptians take onions, roasted, and each cut into four pieces, with small bits of baked meat, and slices of an acid apple, which the Turks call kebobs. With this sweet and savoury dish they are so delighted, that they trust to enjoy it in paradise. The Israelites were willing to return to slavery and brick-making for their love of the Onion; and we read that Hecamedes presented some of the bulbs to Patrochus, in Homer, as a regala. These are supplied liberally to the antelopes and giraffes in our Zoological Gardens, which animals dote on the Onion.

A clever paraprase of the word Onion may be read in the lines:--

"Charge! Stanley, charge! On! Stanley, on! Were the last words of Marmion. If I had been in Stanley's place When Marmion urged him to the chase, In me you quickly would descry What draws a tear from many an eye."

For chilblains apply onions with salt pounded together, and for inflamed or protruding piles, raw Onion pulp, made by bruising the bulb, if kept bound to the parts by a compress, and renewed as needed, will afford certain relief.

The Garlic (Allium sativum), Skorodon of the Greeks, which was first cultivated in English gardens in 1540, takes its name, from gar, a spear; and leac, a plant, either because of its sharp tapering leaves, or perhaps as "the war plant," by reason of its nutritive and stimulating qualities for those who do battle. It is known also to many as "Poor-man's Treacle," or "Churls Treacle," from being regarded by rustics as a treacle, or antidote to the bite of any venomous reptile.

The bulb, consisting of several combined cloves, is stimulating, antispasmodic, expectorant, and diuretic. Its active properties depend on an essential oil which may be readily obtained by distillation. A medicinal tincture is made (H.) with spirit of wine, of which from ten to twenty drops may be taken in water several times a day. Garlic proves useful in asthma, whooping-cough, and other spasmodic affections of the chest. For all adult, one or more cloves may be eaten at a time. The odour of the bulb is very diffusible, even when it is applied to the soles of the feet its odour is exhaled by the lungs.

When bruised and mixed with lard, it makes a most useful opbdeldoc to be rubbed in for irritable spines of indolent scrofulous tumours or gout, until the skin surface becomes red and glowing. If employed thus over the chest (back and front) of a child with whooping-cough, it proves eminently helpful.

Raw Garlic, when applied to the skin, reddens it, and the odour sniffed into the nostrils will revive an hysterical sufferer. It formed the principal ingredient in the "Four thieves' vinegar," which was adopted so successfully at Marseilles for protection against the plague, when prevailing there. This originated with four thieves, who confessed that, whilst protected by the liberal use of aromatic vinegar during the plague, they plundered the dead bodies of its victims with complete security. Or, according to another explanation of the name, an old tract, printed in 1749, testifies that one, Richard Forthave, who lived in Bishopsgate Street, invented and sold a vinegar which had such a run that he soon grew famous, and that his surname became thus corrupted in the course of time.

But long before the plague at Marseilles (1722) vinegar was employed as a disinfectant. With Cardinal Wolsey it was a constant custom to carry in his hand an orange emptied of its pulp, and containing a sponge soaked in vinegar made aromatic with spices, so as to protect himself from infection when passing through the crowds which his splendour and his office attracted.

It is related that during a former outbreak of infectious fever in Somer's Town and St. Giles's, the French priests, who constantly used Garlic in all their dishes, visited the worst cases in the dirtiest hovels with impunity, while the English clergy, who were similarly engaged, but who did not eat onions in like fashion, caught the infection in many instances, and fell victims to the disease.

For toothache and earache, a clove of Garlic stripped of its skin, and cut in the form of a suppository, if thrust in the ear of the aching side, will soon assuage the pain. If introduced into the lower bowel, it will help to destroy thread worms, and when swallowed it abolishes round worms.

As a condiment, Garlic undoubtedly aids digestion by stimulating the circulation, with a consequent increase of saliva and gastric juice. The juice from the bulbs can be employed for cementing broken glass or china, by means of its mucilage.

Dr. Bowles, a noted English physician of former times, made use of Garlic with much success as a secret remedy for asthma. He concocted a preserve from the boiled cloves with vinegar and sugar, to be kept in an earthen jar. The dose was a bulb or two with some of the syrup, each morning when fasting. The pain of rheumatic parts may be much relieved by simply rubbing them with cut Garlic.

Garlic emits the most acrimonious smell of all the onion tribe. When leprosy prevailed in this country, Garlic was a prime specific for its relief, and as the victims had to "pil," or peel their own garlic, they were nicknamed "Pil Garlics," and hence it came about that anyone shunned like a leper had this epithet applied to him. Stow says, concerning a man growing old: "He will soon be a peeled garlic like myself."

The strong penetrating odour and taste of this plant, though offensive to most English palates, are much relished by Russians, Poles, and Spaniards, and especially by the Jews. But the Greeks detested Garlic. It is true the Attic husbandmen ate it from remote times, probably in part to drive away by its odour venomous creatures from assailing them; but persons who partook of it were not allowed to enter the temples of Cybele, says Athenaeus; and so hated was garlic, that to have to eat it was a punishment for those that had committed the most horrid crimes; Horace, among the Romans, was made ill by eating garlic at the table of Maecenas; and afterwards (in his third Epode) he reviled the plant as, Cicutis allium nocentius, "Garlic more poisonous than hemlock." Sir Theodore Martin has thus spiritedly translated the passage:--

"If his old father's throat any impious sinner, Has cut with unnatural hand to the bone: Give him garlick--more noxious than hemlock--at dinner; Ye gods! what strong stomachs the reapers must own!"

The singular property is attributed to Garlic, that if a morsel of the bulb is chewed by a man running a race, it will prevent his competitors from getting ahead of him. Hungarian jockeys sometimes fasten a clove of garlic to the bits of their racers; and it is said that the horses which run against those thus baited, fall back the moment they smell the offensive odour. If a leg of mutton, before being roasted, has a small clove of Garlic inserted into the knuckle, and the joint is afterwards served with haricot beans (soaked for twenty-four hours before being boiled), it is rendered doubly delicious. In Greece snails dressed with Garlic are now a favourite dish.

A well known chef is said to have chewed a small clove of Garlic when he wished to impart its delicate flavour to a choice plat, over which he then breathed lightly. Dumas relates that the whole atmosphere of Provence is impregnated with the perfume of Garlic, and is exceedingly wholesome to inhale.

As an instance of lunar influences (which undoubtedly affect our bodily welfare), it is remarkable that if Garlic is planted when the moon is in the full, the bulb will be round like an onion, instead of being composed, as it usually is, of several distinct cloves.

Homer says it was to the virtues of the Yellow Garlic (Moly?) Ulysses owed his escape from being changed by Circe into a pig, like each of his companions.