which
was supposed to cure cancer, remove tumours, and so forth. It was a
compound of garlic and olive-oil, and had a smell which was enough to
frighten away any disease--or else to create one. Then the fair dames
of old had a favourite cosmetic for the hands and face, and one also
which was used as an antiseptic, which was largely composed of garlic.
Leek ointment, again, made of pounded leeks and hog's lard, was used as
a liniment for burns and scalds.

It is said that in India, where dyspepsia is common, garlic is found to
be a great palliative. It is in many countries regarded as a sure
antidote against contagion; and persons have been known to put a small
piece in the mouth before approaching the bed of a fever-stricken
patient. Whether it has any real virtue of the kind one may doubt, but
let us hope that it has more than is ascribed to some so-called
disinfectants--the power to kill one bad smell with another.

In The Family Dictionary, popular in our grandfathers' time, appears the
following certain remedy for the plague: 'Take away the core of an
onion, fill the cavity with treacle dissolved or mixed with lemon-juice,
stop up the hole with the slice you have cut off, roast the whole on hot
ashes so long till well incorporated and mixed together, then squeeze
out the juice of the roasted onion, and give it to a person seized with
the plague. Let him presently lie down in his bed and be well covered up
that he may perspire. This is a remedy that has not its equal for the
plague, provided the patient perspires presently.'

And if it did promote perspiration, one can well believe that it might
be curative.

Not only has garlic been esteemed as an antidote to the bite of snakes,
but it has also been regarded as a cure for hydrophobia, while onions
have been claimed as a cure for small-pox, and leeks as an antidote for
poisonous fungi. Old Celsus, from whom Paracelsus took his name,
regarded several of the onion tribe as valuable in cases of ague, and
Pliny had the same belief. In our own time the onion is held to be an
excellent anti-scorbutic, and is thought to be more useful on ship-board
than lime-juice in preventing scurvy.

In fact, in all skin diseases, and in many inflammatory disorders,
preparations of the onion have a real value. The juice is also useful in
stopping bleeding, although one may hesitate to believe, as was
popularly supposed, that a drop of it will cure earache, and that
persistent appli