Onions prevented thirst and could be dried and preserved for later consumption when food might be scarce. While the place and time of the onion's origin are still a mystery, there are many documents, from very early times, which describe its importance as a food and its use in art, medicine and mummification.

Onions grew in Chinese gardens as early as years ago, and they are referenced in some of the oldest Vedic writings from India. In Egypt, onions can be traced back to BC. There is evidence that the Sumerians were growing onions as early as BC.

One Sumerian text dated to about BC tells of someone plowing over the city governor's onion patch. Authorities throughout the ancient world recommended onion for a variety of health problems. Several parts of the plant have a place in the traditional medicines. The seeds of onion have been used to increase semen and relieve dental worms and urinary diseases.

The stalks of onion are a source of Vitamin A, thiamin and ascorbic acid. The bulbs were used in a multitude of ways. Onions are used in both tender and mature stages. Onions were highly regarded as a symbol of the universe by the ancient Egyptians, and many beliefs were associated with them.

The Egyptians saw eternal life in the anatomy of the onion because of its circle-within-a-circle structure. Paintings of onions appear on the inner walls of the pyramids and in the tombs of both the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom.

Not only did they use them as currency to pay the workers who built the pyramids, but they also placed them in the tombs of kings, such as Tutankhamen, as a symbol of eternity.

In mummies, onions have frequently been found in the pelvic regions of the body, in the thorax, flattened against the ears and in front of the collapsed eyes. Flowering onions have been found on the chest, and onions have been found attached to the soles of the feet and along the legs.

King Ramses IV, who died in BC, was entombed with onions in his eye sockets. Frequently, a priest is pictured holding onions in his hand or onions are found covering an altar with a bundle of their leaves or roots.

The onion is mentioned as a funeral offering and onions are depicted on the banquet tables of the great feasts, both large, peeled onions and slender, immature ones.

They were shown upon the altars of the gods. Onion seeds have been found in Egyptian tombs dated to BC. Other Egyptologists believe it was because onions were known for their strong antiseptic qualities. The physicians of ancient Egypt prescribed onions in various diseases. Egyptians numbered over onion-alleviated ailments.

Onions are noted in the Bible in BC as one of the foods most longed for by the Israelites after leaving Egypt for the Promised Land. In Numbers , the children of Israel lament the meager desert diet enforced by the Exodus: "We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic.

In India as early as the sixth century BC, the medical treatise Charaka - Sanhita recognized various vegetables and spices to protect against various health problems as well provide cure from certain diseases. It acknowledged the onion as a diuretic, good for digestion, the heart, the eyes and the joints.

Onion has an ancient reputation as a curative agent, highly extolled by the schools of Galen and Hippocrates. The esteemed Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed onions as a diuretic, wound healer and pneumonia fighter in the 5th century BC and gave a comprehensive description of its medicinal properties.

Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the first century AD noted several medicinal uses of onions. The Greeks used onions to fortify athletes for the Olympic Games.

Before competition, athletes would consume pounds of onions, drink onion juice and rub onions on their bodies. Athletes ate large quantities of onion because they thought it would lighten the balance of blood.

There are also details of the cultivation, use and history of onion in the 1st century AD, Natural History Compendium by Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Elder.

Pliny catalogued the Roman beliefs about the efficacy of the onion to cure vision, induce sleep, and to heal mouth sores, dog bites, toothaches, dysentery and lumbago. The Romans cultivated onions in special gardens cepinae which had specialized gardeners ceparii. The Romans ate onions regularly and carried them on journeys to their provinces in England and Germany.

It is thought that they took onion north of the Alps. Different cultivars of onion are listed in garden catalogs from the 9th century AD in the era of Charles the Great. But the onion became widespread as a crop in Europe only during the Middle Ages when it was one of three main vegetables of European cuisine along with beans and cabbage.

In addition to serving as a food for both the poor and the wealthy, onions were prescribed medicinally to alleviate headaches, and for snakebites and hair loss to name a few. They were also used as rent payments and wedding gifts. During medieval times much use was made of herbs to treat medical conditions.

There was no such thing as double blind studies and scientific research to prove an herb's effectiveness and dosage level. People relied on word of mouth, folklore and old wives tales to guide them in the proper use of herbs.

It was believed that onion attracted and absorbed infectious matters and was usually hung in rooms to prevent illness.

This belief in the absorptive power of the onion is still prevalent. It is reported that during the plague-epidemic in London, when the contagion spread everywhere, the owners of onion and garlic shops were the only persons who proved immune to the disease.

Bunches were hung on doors to ward off the plague in medieval Europe as well as copiously consumed. British folklorist James Napier noted: "When a youth, I remember the following story being told, and implicitly believed by all.

There was once a certain king or nobleman who was in want of a physician, and two celebrated doctors applied. As both could not obtain the situation, they agreed among themselves that the one was to try to poison the other, and he who succeeded in overcoming the poison would thus be left free to fill the situation.

They drew lots as to who should first take the poison. The first dose given was a stewed toad, but the party who took it immediately applied a poultice of peeled onions over his stomach, and thus abstracted all the poison of the toad.

Two days after, the other doctor was given the onions to eat. He ate them, and died. It was generally believed that the poultice of peeled onions laid on the stomach, or underneath the armpits, would cure anyone who had taken poison.

Christopher Columbus brought onions on his voyage to the New World and planted them in the West Indies where they naturalized. Eaten as they are found, both bulbs and leaves, after washing.

Anthelmintic, antiseptic, antispasmodic, carminative, diuretic, expectorant, stomachic, tonic Back to Top. Onions were a favorite food of the Egyptian slaves. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, 9 tons of gold was given in payment for the onion consumed by the slaves building the great pyramids.

The regarded the brittle brown skin which envelops the onion bulb as a symbol of the universe. The slices were collected and burned each day. One herbalist recorded a story attributing the immunization to garlic. The conflicting stories serve to demonstrate the inherent similarities of the two herbs.

Culpeper noted onions served as well as garlic. Personally, when I was a child, my uncle had a pet spider monkey. Every now and then, he would give the animal, named Chipper, a raw onion. Onion juice or a decoction or extract is used as a diuretic or expectorant agent, but it has been used for ages for the other purposes indicated.

Boiled, it is used to eliminate fluid retention in the system. Onion helps to end putrefactive and fermentation processes in the gastrointestinal tract.

It is said to strengthen the heart and tends to lower blood pressure, good for scalds and burns; blemishes, spots, calluses, warts, athletes foot, sprains, piles, and marks in the skin. Helps restore sexual potency which has been impaired by illness or mental stress, increases sperm.

Half an onion cut small and eaten with bread will relieve gas pains and heartburn. Onion juice mixed with honey is good for colds, flu, hoarseness and coughs.

Externally, onion juice can be applied to suppurating wounds or sores, boils. For gout, thrombosis, and diabetes, high cholesterol, helps prevent blood clots, helps restore sexual impotency, as well as hardening of the arteries, onions as a food are a vital part of the treatment.

Onion has a good effect on appetite, dandruff and loss of hair, colds, flu, hay fever, whooping cough, laryngitis, yellow fever, pneumonia, fever, colic, bladder cramps, earache, headache, chill, kills worms, and toothache.

Place fresh slices on insect stings for rapid relief. Also use to relieve nettle rash or hives urticaria caused by food allergies. To make onion juice, puree one raw onion in a blender or food processor and strain through a cheesecloth.

Store in the refrigerator. For colds, mix warm juice with 2 tsp. Cold extract: soak a chopped onion in 1 cup water for 24 hours and strain.

Decoction: boil a medium-size, chopped onion in a little more than a cup of water until 1 cup liquid remains.

Take 1 tbsp. Breast-feeding an infant, mothers should avoid onions because they could cause the baby to suffer colic. The Complete Medicinal Herbal , by Penelope Ody, Dorling Kindersley, Inc, Madison Avenue, New York, NY , First American Edition, copyright Back to Eden , by Jethro Kloss; Back to Eden Publishing Co.

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