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 finely, add two tablespoons of sugar or honey, leave to stand three to four hours, take the juice by the spoonful.
The sweet, viscous juice coats the lining like honey; the pungent sulphur compounds of onion are traditionally described as loosening mucus.
Controlled studies are scarce; the convincing part is the sweet film, not the onion.
With honey only after the first year. With diabetes, keep an eye on the amount.
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.