I missed something on the way through “The Three Sisters” so here’s an extra comment.

The part that struck me on a relisten is “This is not a fever that will yield to medicine and diet, much less are these ordinary wounds which require lint and oil; for the charm that was on the broken glass produces the same effect as onion juice does on the iron heads of arrows, which makes the wound incurable. There is one thing only that could save his life, but don’t ask me to tell it to you, for it is a thing of importance.” The thing is the rendered fat of the ogres.

I was surprised by this idea – that onions poison arrowheads. It’s not a unique concept: many people have wanted to make their projectiles more dangerous with whatever is about. For example, there are stories of English archers urinating onto the ground into which they have stuck their arrows, to encourage sepsis.

I’m surprised it was onions, though, because onions were used in precisely the opposite way in later periods. For example, during the American Civil War, oil of onions was used on burns wounds. It’s a mild antibiotic – but back then that was about as good as you were going to get, and onions can be carted about anywhere provided you keep them dry.

During the American Civil War, they had got to the point of not salving all wounds with ungents, so the use of onion oil on burns was an exception. The odd thing is if they needed to suture wounds, they’d put a piece of onion in the wound before sewing, and then reopen it in a few days. What they were hoping for was laudable pus – a sort of yellow-white pus that they saw as the leftover of the body’s process of digestion of ill humours in the wound.. Since the time of the Greeks people had noticed that pus-filled wounds tend to heal and those without pus were more likely to be fatal. “Not pus filled”, in this case, meaning injuries where the tissues had become necrotic. It seemed odd to have onions go the other way, to make wounds not seal.

For Magonomia, it does give me an idea for an Alchemical preparation – I wouldn’t like to make it a standard effect of raw onion juice, because otherwise every chef in Europe will eventually bleed out through the fingertips. In Ars Magica you’d just make it a folk charm that duplicates The Wound That Weeps.

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