Onions? Interesting IF true!

Fron the cloud,











PLEASE READ TO THE END: IMPORTANT

In 1919 when the flu killed 40 million people there was this Doctor that
visited the many farmers to see if he could help them combat the flu...
Many of the farmers and their families had contracted it and many died.

The doctor came upon this one farmer and to his surprise, everyone was very
healthy. When the doctor asked what the farmer was doing that was different
the wife replied that she had placed an unpeeled onion in a dish in the
rooms of the home, (probably only two rooms back then). The doctor couldn't
believe it and asked if he could have one of the onions and place it under
the microscope. She gave him one and when he did this, he did find the flu
virus in the onion. It obviously absorbed the bacteria, therefore, keeping
the family healthy.


















Now, I heard this story from my hairdresser. She said that several
years ago, many of her employees were coming down with the flu, and so were
many of her customers. The next year she placed several bowls with onions
around in her shop. To her surprise, none of her staff got sick. It must
work. Try it and see what happens. We did it last year and we never got the flu.











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Now there is a P. S. to this for I sent it to a friend in Oregon who
regularly contributes material to me on health issues. She replied with this
most interesting experience about onions:

Thanks for the reminder. I don't know about the farmer's story...but, I do
know that I contacted pneumonia, and, needless to say, I was very ill... I came
across an article that said to cut both ends off an onion put it into an
empty jar, and place the jar next to the sick patient at night. It said the
onion wo uld be black in the morning from the germs...sure enough it happened
just like that...the onion was a mess and I began to feel better.

Another thing I read in the article was that onions and garlic placed around
the room saved many from the black plague years ago. They have powerful
antibacterial, antiseptic properties.

This is the other note.

Lots of times when we have stomach problems we don't know what to blame.
Maybe it's the onions that are to blame. Onions absorb bacteria is the
reason they are so good at preventing us from getting colds and flu and is
the very reason we shouldn't eat an onion that has been sitting for a time
after it has been cut open.

LEFT OVER ONIONS ARE POISONOUS

I had the wonderful privilege of touring Mullins Food Products, Makers of
mayonnaise. Questions about food poisoning came up, and I wanted to share











what I learned from a chemist.

Ed, who was our tour guide, is a food chemistry whiz. During the tour, someone
asked if we really needed to worry about mayonnaise. People are always
worried that mayonnaise will spoil. Ed's answer will surprise you. Ed said
that all commercially-made mayo is completely safe.

"It doesn't even have to be refrigerated. No harm in refrigerating it, but
it's not really necessary." He explained that the pH in mayonnaise is set at
a point that bacteria could not survive in that environment. He then talked
about the summer picnic, with the bowl of potato salad sitting on
the table, and how everyone blames the mayonnaise when someone gets sick.

Ed says that, when food poisoning is reported, the first thing the officials
look for is when the 'victim' last ate ONIONS and where those onions came
from (in the potato salad?). Ed says it's not the mayonnaise (as long as
it's not homemade mayo) that spoils in the outdoors. It's probably the
ONIONS, and if not the onions, it's the POTATOES.

He explained onions are a huge magnet for bacteria, especially uncooked
onions. You should never plan to keep a portion of a sliced onion.. He says
it's not even safe if you put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in your
refrigerator.

It's already contaminated enough just by being cut open and out for a bit,
that it can be a danger to you (and doubly watch out for those onions you
put in your hotdogs at the baseball park!). Ed says if you take the leftover onion and cook it like crazy you'll probably be okay, but if you slice that leftover onion and put on your sandwich, you're asking for trouble. Both the onions and the moist potato in a potato salad, will attract and grow bacteria faster than any commercial mayonnaise will even begin to break down.

Also, dogs should never eat onions. T heir stomachs cannot metabolize onions.

Please remember it is dangerous to cut an onion and try to use it to cook
the next day, it becomes highly poisonous for even a single night and
creates toxic bacteria which may cause adverse stomach infections because of excess bile secretions and even food poisoning.

Greetings,
Susan Christie - I Love Onions - 1966 - YouTube

This email has been floating around for a very long time. I have received it several times now over the years. But the belief in onion home remedies goes back to the 16th century. As urban legands go, It's an old one.

Email text contributed by Marv B., Oct. 7, 2009:
Analysis: There's no scientific basis for this old wives' tale, which dates at least as far back as the 1500s, when it was believed that distributing raw onions around a residence guarded against the bubonic plague. This was long before germs were discovered, of course, and the prevalent theory held that contagious diseases were spread by miasma, or "noxious air." The assumption was that onions, whose absorbent qualities had been well known since ancient times, cleansed the air by trapping harmful odors.
"When a home was visited by the plague," writes Lee Pearson in Elizabethans at Home (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), "slices of onion were laid on plates throughout the house and not removed till ten days after the last case had died or recovered. Since onions, sliced, were supposed to absorb elements of infection, they were also used in poultices to draw out infection."
In the ensuing centuries the technique remained a staple of folk medicine, with application not only as a preventative for the plague, but to ward off all kinds of epidemic diseases, including smallpox, influenza, and other "infectious fevers." The use of onions for this purpose even outlasted the concept of miasma, which gave way to the germ theory of infectious disease by the late 1800s.
The transition is illustrated by passages from two different 19th-century texts, one of which claims that sliced onions are capable of absorbing a "poisonous atmosphere," while the other says onions will absorb "all the germs" in a sickroom.
"Whenever and wherever a person is suffering from any infectious fever," we read in Duret's Practical Household Cookery, published in 1891, "let a peeled onion be kept on a plate in the room of the patient. No one will ever catch the disease, provided the said onion be replaced every day by one freshly peeled, as then it will have absorbed the whole of the poisonous atmosphere of the room, and become black."
And, in the Western Dental Review, published in 1887, we read: "It has been repeatedly observed that an onion patch in the immediate vicinity of a house acts as a shield against the pestilence. Sliced onions in a sick room absorb all the germs and prevent contagion."
There is, of course, no more scientific basis for the belief that onions absorb all the germs in a room than the belief that onions rid the air of "poisons."

Greetings,
Well gosh darn. There goes my Sunday go-ta-meetin' outfit....

Onions poisonous? Nonsense. Hey, April Fools Day is still over a week away.

FF quoted a plagarized portion of this site:

Are Leftover Onions Poisonous? - Urban Legends

Greetings,
What time zone are you in? It's tomorrow or in two hours if you live in Dublin, Ireland.

The twilight time zone.

Greetings,

Twilight Zone Opening THEME MUSIC 1962 Rod Serling - YouTube

Interesting tho that medicine didn't really have much to offer till penicillin ,

and yet the Hindus had been putting cow dung on open wounds for dozens of centuries !

Some "old wives tales" may be how those wives lived to be old.

FF

Greetings,
Without a doubt there is some historical use of homeopathic/herbal/old wives remedies that have proven to be effective and accepted by modern medicine. Leeches are used in burn and surgery treatment. Foxglove has been used for cardiac treatments since the 1780's. Maggots are still used to clean wounds. etc.
That beings said, I feel onions are in fact an "old wives tale" especially in treatment and prevention of plague. It does have some therapeutic value as does garlic (flavonoids) but is not a "cure" as such although ongoing research indicates some efficacy in some cases from what I'm led to believe is due to their anti oxidant constituents.

Ah. April Fools - got it.

I read through the whole thing looking for the recommendation of a cup of onion juice as a fuel additive.