Home remedies · Throat, pharynx & cough
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Chop an onion small and warm it briefly to hand temperature — in a dry pan or over steam, not fried. Put it in a cotton cloth and tie it shut. A thin cloth on the skin, the pouch on top, a dry cloth over it, all held with a wrap. Twenty to thirty minutes, or overnight, as long as it stays comfortable.
Cutting releases sulphur compounds — the same ones that make the eyes water. They are credited with loosening mucus and a mild anti-inflammatory effect. For onion syrup taken by mouth there are small studies; for the compress there are none — it is traditional. The second part is the damp warmth itself: it relaxes the muscles between the ribs and settles the urge to cough — the common denominator of every chest compress, whether onion, potato or quark.
Never apply it hot and never straight on the skin — onion can irritate it; with children rather shorter and with a thicker cloth between. Not on irritated, broken or sunburnt skin. The same pouch is also laid on the ear; there the rule is: only on the outside, never anything inside the ear, and in a child with earache and fever it does not replace an examination. And the smell stays in clothes and bedding.
Breathlessness, pain on breathing, high fever beyond three days or rising again, blood in the sputum, a child breathing fast or drawing in between the ribs — that must be seen at once, not wrapped.
Get seen at once: severe one-sided pain with high fever, trouble swallowing your own saliva, a muffled voice or breathlessness. Likewise hoarseness lasting beyond three weeks, and coughing blood. In children also drooling and sitting with the chin pushed forward.