My response is based on research in early medieval medicine primarily,
so bear in mind those limitations. My general reaction is that onions
are used medicinally because they fit into the schema of humors,
rebalancing hot, wet, cold, dry (are onions hot and dry?). However, I
simply could not find good references on my shelf for this (I checked
the first four volumes of Lynn Thorndike's Hy of Magic and Experimental
Science, Nancy Siraisi's Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine,
Richard Kieckhefer's Magic in the Middle Ages, as well as Cockayne's 3
volume Anglo-Saxon set of medicinal remedies, which does have recipes
with onions, but he is not indexed).
However, I did find some intriguing references in M.L. Cameron's
_Anglo-Saxon Medicine_, pp. 119-120 about the medicinal properties of
onion, garlic, and bull's gall as effective antibiotics, against staph
in particular. He cites remedies, and also reasons that, while the
existence of bacteria was unknown, some kind of clinical observation
over a period of time must have confirmed the success of these remedies.
Assuming Anglo-Saxon cropleac (cropleek) is generally an onion, then it
appears in several of the Anglo-Saxon remedies I studied in my elf book
(Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf-Charms in Context),
against demon-possession, madness, elf-affliction, etc. Identifying
medieval plants is a risky business, so I am not prepared to say that
the cropleek remedies here carry over into the later Middle Ages as
onion.
Undoubtedly studies of high medieval medicine must have something on
onions, but I do not have anything at hand!
KL Jolly
--
Dr. Karen Jolly
Associate Professor, History
University of Hawai`i at Manoa
[log in to unmask]
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kjolly
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