Sounds improbable, but it's harmless. :)

Old time remedy: Asafetida bag; filled with fetid gum resin of various oriental plants of the carrot family. Pioneers also used onion and garlic. It was not used as cure, but as a general prophylactic against disease. Probably mostly folklore, but I suppose it could have had an effect because folks would keep their distance from you when you wore one of these bags, and that would reduce getting sneezed or breathed on.

There is also the onion poultice (or onion and salt) for chest congestion. Onions are also used for making homemade cough syrup and tinctures. A hundred years ago, according to an article in my file, this type of treatment was cataloged under the heading of "counter-irritants" in early 20th century medical texts. These treatments were based on the principle that "internal morbid processes may at times be relieved by creating external irritations" (Horatio Charles Wood in Therapeutics: Its Principles and Practice, 1908).

I grow chives indoors and wonder if it has some effect since it's in the onion family? And now with further reading, I have an answer to my own question: Alliums (allium spp., especially A. sativum). Garlic, onions, scallions, shallots, and to a lesser degree, chives, which are rich in sulfur compounds and have antibacterial qualities. Historically, the concentric layers of the onion were believed to draw contagious diseases from the patient into the bulb. Thus, an onion was often hung in a sickroom. Native Americans used wild onions and wild leeks for coughs and colds. Today many mouthwashes and throat lozenges include a synthetic equivalent of the active bacteria-killing property in onion juice. (Source: Traditional Home Remedies - The Old Farmer's Home Library Almanac - Martha White and the Editors of the Old Farmer's Almanac)

From the link you posted...

"...put an onion in a bowel" Ewww! Sounds uncomfortable.

A few years ago when DS got a bad chest cold, with no insurance, I cut an onion and put in a bowl by his bed. Threw it out the next day, and did another the next night. Surprisingly, each day there was a huge improvement in the way he felt and sounded. Even though I had read it on face book, and figured it probably wouldn't work, for the price of a couple of onions, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it.

I have also read that placing a bowl of uncut onions around the house will help prevent getting sick.

Also, that you should not keep a cut onion to use the next time you cook, because it absorbs bacteria.

Never tried it. What type of onions do you use? Strong ones like the yellow onions or the milder red/purple onions?

When I was a child, our housekeeper would slice onions in a bowl with sugar with a weight on top to force out juice. This was a cold remedy.

Any onions should work, if it works. I would just use the cheapest ones you can get. I know I probably used yellow cooking onions from Aldi, or the cheapest yellow cooking onions I could buy at the time. I use very few onions, so I don't spend much on them.

I've always heard that garlic is "poor man's penicillin". I know it is used in a lot immune building vitamins. For congestion, a strong slice of onion and cheese sandwich would open up the sinuses.

Thank goodness Glenda.... Glad you're okay. I thought you had the flu! I've read that about the onion before. Problem is, I probably wouldn't remember to do it. In fact, in the article I read, it claimed that mayo at room temp in the summertime was not the cause of salads spoiling, but the onion in the salad!

pink, you're not alone. cough syrup from onions and sugar!

Folk and alternative remedies often originate from 1) times and places in the past when medical knowledge was rudimentary, or 2) people who had no access to modern medicine and so created their own "treatments" out of materials that were available to them. They believed in them out of ignorance and for lack of anything else.

Consistent with the saying "even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally", a very small percentage of folk remedies have been found to be medically effective. But, mostly not.

Save those onions to use making something tasty when the sick person feels better.

Had a friend, years ago, who would bring me something like this, when I would get sick. Wasn't the only one she would prepare these for.

GRANDMA’S REMEDY
At the first sign of a cold, make a ‘bacon plaster’ for your child to wear day and night, especially to school. Take a slice of fatty bacon cut off the joint, place between two pieces of muslin or cheesecloth, and attach it to his chest with tape. He may protest at the smell, which can be potent, but the bacon keeps the chest clear, and wards off congestion. A big saucepan of chicken soup will also do wonders by opening up the airways and soothing cold symptoms

Interesting from Readers Digest

GRANDMA’S REMEDY
At the first sign of a cold, make a ‘bacon plaster’ for your child to wear day and night, especially to school

*******

I wonder what Grandma did when you'd come home with a pack of dogs in tow?

Hahaha yes no kidding! Hey you know that saying everything is better with bacon!

I know nothing about onions but I always have a basket of unpeeled onions in my kitchen so maybe they are wafting through the house keeping the bad bugs away. But I have always had a basket of onions in the kitchen even during the times we were both sick with colds etc. I do cook a lot with onions and garlic. I have heard if an onion isn't perfect don't eat it because even a lightly bad onion can make you very sick but usually no one blames the onion they blame something else in the meal. I used to cut out any part that looked iffy and use the rest but I no longer do that I toss it in the trash.

One thing that many of the old timers swear by is vicks vaporub, rub it liberally on the bottoms of your feet before bed, put on heavy socks, sleep that way. My mother would heat the vicks and cover my entire chest with it for a cold or flu. It sure opens up the sinuses! I hated the hot vicks rub. She would also put some right below each nostril. I don'tdon't recall anything involving onions. For cough it was usually local honey and baking soda mixed together heated a little fed to us by the spoonful. On some occasions a little fresh squeezed Iemon juice was added or a splash of whiskey, we didn't have whiskey in the house normally so that was rare.

Putting Vicks near--or in--the nostrils is a very bad idea. Plenty survive without incident, but when the actual substance (rather than just the smell) is inhaled it can lead to bad things.

Onion plasters can do a lot of good, but you also have to be very careful not to burn the patient. You know the story the moms always told about the girl in the shorts who sat on the hood of the car getting her butt burned when it only felt "warm"? Same thing. The last thing someone with pneumonia needs is a second degree burn on the chest. That said, the heat and fumes from the onions can be beneficial.

The problem with the onion around the house or by the bed stuff is that we only have the positive outcomes. In a properly done experiment, we'd learn if there were people who received no benefit, and could determine by the numbers if those with very good outcomes got them by chance, or if the onion was a likely factor.

The fact is that most cures are just stopgaps while the body does its healing as its supposed to. A lot of medicine is like that. It's more about treating symptoms and preventing secondary infections than actually curing. Antivirals, if taken right away, can work wonders. They actually do cure. The rest of what they have to treat colds is just to make you less miserable. It's quite possible that the cut onion by the bed could release fumes that also ease misery. It's highly unlikely that it cures, however.

Eating onions and garlic is documented as helping the immune system, so eating them are preventative as well as tasty. :)

The thing about talismans, however, is that so long as you don't let your belief in them prevent you from seeking care when more is needed, they're harmless, and if decorating your house with onions pleases you, it can't hurt.

There are some of us, who are of the older generation that grew up with these notions. I for one did and I'm close to 77.

I definitely remember being put to bed with an onion poultice when I was young. We were a big family so that was a standing fragrance in our house in the winter time; also mustard plasters, but I don't recall what they were used for. And Vicks was also used as a chest rub. And Castor Oil for whatever ailed you.

My two grandmothers were each born in the 1890s. Both are long since dead, of course. Neither was a proponent of any folk medicine or superstition-based health treatments or remedies, and so my parents weren't either.

Neither lived in a rural part of the country or in South. I wonder if these practices have more of a regional prevalence than not.

I am sure that being in rural areas could have something to do with some of the treatments, but probably not all. I have a friend in Canada that still uses the onion poultices for coughs. The Vicks on the feet covered with socks at night does help with coughing, and lets you get some rest. As for the onions beside the bed, maybe it works, and maybe it doesn't. But I do know that my son was on the verge of bronchitis, if he didn't already have it, when I put the cut onion beside his bed. And it helped. I threw it out the next morning and put a fresh one back the next night. Of course, not everything works for every person, just like modern medicine.

As for the garlic, just the smell of it heavy in the air, can be deadly to me. I am allergic to garlic! And not permitted to carry an epi-pen due to high blood pressure. So far, I have been lucky enough that Benedryl was enough to stop the hives from getting bad enough to send me to the hospital, but when you break out from the chest up, you tend to think about the hives possibly closing off your air way. And I have been at a wedding reception that the ballroom and hallway where it was held reeked of garlic, and just the oils in the air made me break out. Needless to say, we did not stay.

wives tales

Might be of interest.

Tami, do you think it would be worth a desensitization treatment like they do with peanut allergies, where, unlike the shots, you eat a teeny tiny bit daily (starting microscopic), at the hospital until they're sure you can tolerate it, gradually increasing. At a certain point you can be around the allergen in the air, and can continue the treatment at home.

Oh my god. I don't believe I read through about six years of b.s.

Hm.... According to the National Onion Association, the this started in the 1500's as a way to avoid plague.