INTRODUCTION
ALLIUM CEPA.- common Onion.
RATIONALE OF ITS ACTION.
Onions contain an ethereal oil, which is colorless, very volatile, of acrid taste and smell, and which causes inflammation of the skin when applied to it; when this oil is burnt, sulphurous acid is developed. Fourcroy and Vauquelin found Sulphur and Phosphorus in combinations with this ethereal oil, a nd which give rise to the peculiarly disagreeable onion odor; also an abundance of uncrystallizable sugar, a mucilaginous substance resembling gum-arabic, free Phosphorus-acid, and Phosphate of Lime Acetic-acid, Citrate of Lime, and Pectic-acid.
According to Dierbach, Onions are rarely used as a medicine, although they have often been recommended as an article of diet to dropsical persons, while the expressed juice, in teaspoonful doses, sweetened with sugar, has been praised for the same purpose. Applied externally, they also exhibit a diuretic action, whence the bruised bulbs have been used in the form of cataplasms over the abdomen in ascites. Consbruch and Jenner have recommended them in spasmodic ischury and strangury. Onions have been held to the nostrils for the relief of hysteric cramps, and a decoction in milk has been used as an injection against ascarides. But still more frequently their irritating properties have been called in play in order to hasten the suppuration of abscesses, boils, buboes, either singly, or in combination with Mustard, Soap. The vapor of Onions irritates the eyes, and causes lachrymation; when used in excess, the peculiar odor of the Onions is exhausted from the skin, and, in one instance, it was unmistakably detected in the pus of a fistula. Children and
delicate adults cannot well digest raw onions; they are apt to cause eructations, heartburn, and cramps of the stomach. Epileptics should avoid them; also those subject to seminal emissions. Hippocrates was acquainted with the diuretic action of this plant, and also recommended its external use against falling out of the hair. In paralysis, of the tongue, Celsus recommended the chewing of raw Onion; Appollonius used the juice in deafness. Vogt recommends them against infarctions of the abdominal organs; flatulence; chronic catarrhal affections, with tough, glassy mucus; in disease of the urinary organs, gravel, dropsy., Pereira says raw Onions are occasionally taken as an expectorant, with advantage, by elderly persons affected with a winter cough. A roasted Onion is sometimes employed as an emollient poultice to suppurating tumors, or to the ear to relieve the earache. The expressed juice has been given to children, mixed with sugar as an expectorant. The large quantity of Sulphur and Phosphorus which the volatile oil of Onion contains, renders them an applicable remedy in many lung-affections. Sulphur, Graves says (see “Clinical Lectures”), will relieve chronic cough and long- contained congestion of the bronchial mucous membrane.- It would appear that Sulphur, when taken into the system, is eliminated by the kidneys in the form of sulphates, or exhaled from the skin and mucus membranes in the form of sulphuretted hydrogen, and in this way we arrive at some explanation of its beneficial action in diseases of the skin and chronic irritation of the bronchial action in diseases of the skin and chronic irritation of the bronchial mucous membrane. In fact, paradoxical and homoeopathical as it may seem, Sulphur, although evidently stimulating, is nevertheless very efficacious s in curing many diseases connected with, or depending on inflammation or congestion. Thus, what remedy gives such prompt and certain relief in that painful affection, piles? How rapidly does that specific irritation of the skin termed scabies, yield to its use! The celebrated Hoffmann was in the habit of adding Sulphur to his cough prescriptions in all cases of chronic bronchitis in the aged and debilitated, and Graves has no doubt that from five to ten grains of Sulphur, taken three or four times a day, is one of the best remedies in chronic cough accompanied by constitutional debility and copious secretion into the bronchial tubes; it has a tendency to produce elevation of the pulse, increased heat of the skin, and sweating. It is most homoeopathic when the cough arises form a peculiar tickling or itching sensation about the throat- pit. Hering things that Onions fill a chasm between Aconite and Ipecac.; that it is peculiarly useful during many catarrhal epidemics; that it has a certain relation to Chronic and to Phosphorus, and that it may be successfully used either before or after the use of Phosphor., or to complete, with greater rapidity, cures which Phosphorus has left unfinished. It should be more correct to assume that it has affinities with Sulphur and Phosphor. Hering thinks that, in children, it is suited to many affections of the head and eyes; to catarrhs and constant discharges from the nose; to sore throat, cough, rattling in the chest, colic, flatulence, disorders arising from worms, and urinary difficulties. It will often have to be aided by Iodine, Spongia, Sulphur, and Phosphorus. In adults it is also suited to catarrhal affections of the head and eyes; oppression of the chest, senile asthma, and the accompanying or alternating affections of the kidneys, bladder and urinary apparatus, disorders of the stomach and bowels, flatulence, chilliness. It very closely resembles Asafoetida in its action.
A rather rare case of poisoning by Allium-cepa is reported in Frank’s Magazine: A man, aged fifty years, of large frame, sanguine temperament, of regular habits, and always having enjoyed excellent health, was attacked a quarter of an hour after having eaten a raw Onion with his bread and butter at supper, with violent cutting pain in the bowels, frequent urging to urinate, with ability to pass only a few drops of scalding urine. Four hours later his physician found him walking through his apartments in extreme anguish; at times he would throw himself on his bed, complaining of constant violent pain in the left lower half of the abdomen near the umbilicus, accompanied by the above- mentioned urinary difficulty, with constipation, and violent thirst; his countenance had an expression of great anguish and despair; there was increased heat of the skin; pulse some what accelerated, full and hard. The pain in the abdomen was increased by the slightest pressure. The contents of the stomach were removed by an emetic,.
