The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1920-02-20
PLEASE PASS THE ONIONS

There is no way of knowing what
was the first vegetable used for food
by the human race. Fruits took pre-
cedence naturally because of their
sugar contents; after that it is pure
speculation.
The fact is known beyond dispute,
however, and duly recorded that the
onion was among the very first.
Onions are grown around Baghdad to-
day by Arabs just as they were
grown in the times Of Sargon and
Accad, thousands of years before the
Christian Era, and grown pretty
much in the same way, that is to say,
the seed are plazlted in beds, removed
when the size Of goose-quili and
transplanted in the alluvial bottoms,
where they are irrigated from the
river and weeded by hand.
Except in minor details the process
of growing onions is the same in the
Yangste valley and in the Nile valley.
In all these places onions are eaten
green and dried, used for condiments
or for rendering palatable other
dishes. Condiments and made dishes
belong only to the rich and well-to-do.
The poor are content to get the onion
even salt is a luxury. A recent writer
s. S. Leader: Yelled Mysteries Of
Egypt, New York, 1913, gives this
curious information as to the onion:
"The onion land garlic to a lesser
degree), is much appreciated, through
many Moslen2s, thinking Of the Pro
phet's des estat;on c. the smell CT
them, will o1ly eat hem when they
can be sure Of washing mouth and
hands at once, especially if prayer
tine be rear; they believe the oder
will cause the guardian angels to stay
at distance from them, and thus
they would lose their good Offices"
This apl;es to Mosle.as only. The
Egyptian, anchored in the unchang-
ing lotos land, follows the habits and
customs of his ancestors. In the food
accounts of slaves who erected the
great Pyramids, which have recently
been discovered, onions and radishes
figured largely on the bill of fare. The
onion was cultivated in Egypt from
remote antiquity and one species, al
lied to lotos bulbs, was sacred to Ra
and had divine honors. August de
Candolle thought the onion native
of Asia Minor, arguing from linguis-
tic evidences in Hebrew and Sanskrit;
but in India, China and Japan it has
been grown for millennia. Accounts
of it's culture are among the most
ancient records extant in those coun-
tries.
Likewise in Britain the onion has
been grown from the most ancient
times and may have been carried
there by Phoenicians III search of tin.
Anyhow Caius julius Caesar found it
there when he landed and feasted on
it.
In the absence of scientific infor-
nation men had to go on experience;
if they should eat indigestible food,
they died like flies. What was good
to the taste and nour,shing to the
system they seized on. Thus, III the
dawn of time it was found that
onions, especially when covered with
oil and vinegar, were good for man,
kept him strong and healthy. Our
forbears went no further. They had
found good thing; they stuck to it
and handed it down the ages.
In the light of present knowledge,
nothing better has been found than
this combination, to which pepper and
salt may be added, if ones taste
Graves it.
1t may be safely asserted that the
average man who suffers from lndl-
eestion, and has trouble after eating,
will find his troubles vanish, if he
will eat raw onions regularly. He
may not think so. A prejudice
against onions is acquired, and one
may imagine all sorts of things about
them; but a plain trial is enough to
convince.
Among other ingredients, the onion
has a high sulphur content and from
immemorial ages sulphur has been
found to be without rival as tonic
and a medicine, the one difficulty has
been to get it to yield up its proper
ties. Sulphur is hard 10 dissolve; but
the onion has accomplished the feat
and made It soluble; you have only to
eot tie onion to ce.s your quantun of
sulphur and your release from