Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
An Irish Materia Medica (Author: Tadhg Ó Cuinn)
subsection 24
24. Allusal, cepa: i.e. the two names of the garden onion; it is hot and wet in the third degree; it comforts and soothes the stomach and the digestion, it increases the appetite, and it drives away the foulness of the teeth and of the breath. It should be pounded and mixed with honey or with vinegar and put on the bite of a mad dog for three days, and changed on the third day lest the poison should return
p.469
again. Item, take the juice of onion and mother's milk, mix them together, and put them in the ear, and it will help with every pain of the ear. Item, again, pound the onion, mix it with cold water, and give it to drink to the person who has lost his voice, and it will quickly help him. Item, put the juice of an onion, warm, in the nose, and it will cleanse the brain of gross phlegmatic humours. Item, take the juice of an onion and the fat of a hen, boil them together, and they will help with peeling and chapping of the feet. Item, pound an onion, boil it in vinegar, and rub it on the place where there are warts, and it will quickly help them. Understand, if you wish to know whether the patient will recover, take an onion, cook it under the ashes, and put it under his nose; if he is to recover, he will rub his nose, and, if not, he will not perceive the heat or the smell of the onion. Item, chop the onions along with asafetida, and, if they be put on red coals and the smoke allowed to the vagina, they will help with the women's illnesses known as hysteria and displacement of the uterus. Item, the use of onions provokes acute menstruation in women; if it be put through honey, it will help with mistiness of the eyes.