Like tomotoes and garlic, onion is sharp in taste and pungent in aroma. It is also, like garlic, abhorred by some people due to its nauseating and lasting bad smell. It is an essential ingredient for chutneys, salads, meat and vegetable preparations. It is rubefacient, (stimulant but not irritant), stimulant, pungent, expectorant, diuretic.
Onion’s juice or raw form or pulp is useful for jaundice, enlarged spleen, scurvy, plolapsus, acne; sedative properties, cliilblains (not bleeding or broken), wounds, indolent ulcers and boils, skin and blood nourisliing agent, chronic bronchitis, fever, cold and cough, insomnia, colic, scurvy, eye-troubles, diarrhoea, heat stroke, sun stroke, nausea etc. Its useful properties bear no repetition, as it is used, in one form or the other, in many recipes.
It increases vitality and vigour, serves as a stimulant, diuretic, slows heart beat, helps to expectorate and prevents and cures’ dyspepsia and flatulence. Like garlic, it has (1 to 13%) maximum content of carbohydrates, water 8.7 mg, thymine 120 mgs, Niacin 5 mgs, vitamin C 11 mgs, Fat-0.10%, carotene 10, sugar 12%, iron-0.8-1.2 mgs, vitamin B- 40.10, etc. alongwith traces of sulphur and evaporative oil. Onion juice is generally used for following ailments.
(1) Asthma: Mix equal quantity (5-10 ml) of onion and ginger juice and add a pinch of salt and black pepper. If the preparation is too pungent, add also some honey to it. Lick the paste. It may also be applied on enlarged tonsils, in sore throat.
(2) Insomnia: In a glass of milk, mix 5 ml of onion juice and some honey to get sound sleep. It should be taken an hour before retiring to bed, as a last thing at night.
(3) Ear Pain: Drop 2-3 drops of luke-warm onion juice into the painful ear.
(4) T.B., cough, and cold: Equal quantity of onion juice, and garlic, honey will expectorate cough and also clear the lungs. Apply onion juice on forehead or eat a fresh raw onion for subsiding cold. Onion juice or eating of raw onion will both guard against and destroy T.B. germs. It is both preventive and curative of T.B.
(5) For Eye Troubles: Take a tablespoon of pure honey and add juice of white onion to it and store in a bottle. Whisk the bottle before using. Drop 2-3 drops at bed-time in each eye. It will remove/ expel all foreign matters from the eyes, induce sleep, remove redness, itching and pain, improve eye-sight. If irritation persists or is caused by its use, at once stop its use, otherwise symptoms may aggravate. It also provides relief in photophobia and trachoma.
(6) Hysteria: This is normally a woman’s ailment. As soon as hysterical fit is about to set-in, let the patient inhale odour of cut onion and if fit is already there, drop 2-3 drops of fresh onion into each nostril. Absorb onion juice on soles and palms. Those patients who are not hysterical but are unconscious should also be given an identical treatment.
(7) Cholera: Regular use of raw onion or in juice form is both preventive and curative of cholera. In acute stages mix ginger, peppermint, salt, lemon, coriander juice with equal quantity of onion juice and given, according to gravity of situation, in 5-10 doses after every 10-15 minutes or until situation improves.
(8) Epestaxis (Bleeding from Nose): Drop 2-3 drops of onion juice into each nostril to get relief.
(9) Skin—Applicability: Mix together turmeric powder with mustard/ coconut oil and add it to onion juice. Prepare a paste and apply on boils and abscesses, to drain out pus and also for keeping a healthy skin.
(10) Heat-Stroke: Regular use of onion with vinegar will serve as a preventive of heat-stoke. During invasive stage apply onion paste/ juice to forehead, palms and soles to offset effects of heat. It is claimed that if a small onion is kept in the pocket for the whole day or till one moves out, it will not let a person have any heat-stroke, but in the evening the same must be destroyed, as it is not fit for use by any human body or animal.
(11) Menstrual Disorders: Mix jaggery (Gur) in onion juice for being taken regularly, to cure menstrual disorders.
(12) Baldness (Alopecia): Onion juice should be rubbed on bald patches of head to gain new growth of hair.
(13) General: Onion is called a sublime fruit. If an onion is tied near the light, it will dispel insects, mosquitoes. Smell of fresh paint could by got rid of if an onion is kept in the room. Mix onion juice with sesamum oil, and rub it on affected painful joints (in arthritis) to get relief from pain, and inflammation of joints. Labour and poor working classes always use onion as an essential ingredient of their diet, to seek immunity from infection, fatigue, heat etc.