Uses.—The garlic and the onion are used to excess as condiments in Philippine as well as Spanish cooking. Both are difficult of digestion and communicate a very disagreeable odor to the breath, intolerable to those who are unaccustomed to it. Garlic possesses the singular property, familiar to many students and soldiers, of inducing a transient fever if introduced within the anus. When bruised and applied to the skin it has a counter-irritant action which makes it useful in the treatment of rheumatism, but the odor is so disagreeable that it is not worth while to use it for that purpose when we have so many other medicines which produce the same effect without being objectionable. It is also used locally for the bites of venomous animals.
The onion is used cooked as a poultice over the bladder and internally for various catarrhs. It is better to abstain from the therapeutic and culinary use of products so indigestible and so malodorous.
Botanical Description.—These plants are so well known in all parts of the world that a description of them would be superfluous.
Palmæ.
Palm Family.
Areca Catechu, L.
Nom. Vulg.—Bog̃a, Tag.; Betel-nut Palm, Areca, Eng.
Uses.—The seeds form part of a masticatory very common throughout the extreme Orient, known as Buyo and composed of a betel leaf, a little slaked lime, and a slice of the fruit of the bonga, known as Siri in Indo-China and among the Malays. It is so common that it is hard to find a man or woman who does not use it. The saliva of those who use it is red and of a strong odor, and its careless use in time blackens the teeth and makes the breath extremely disagreeable. Habitual chewers consider it a tonic of the mouth and stomach and a general stimulant as well. It probably does possess these properties but they are reversed in the case of persons who use it immoderately for they lose appetite, become salivated, and the whole organism degenerates. The carbonized and powdered fruit is used as a dentifrice but its virtues are doubtless identical with those of any vegetable charcoal, i. e., absorbent and antiseptic.
One unaccustomed to the use of bonga and chewing it for the first time, usually experiences a most disagreeable combination of symptoms; constriction of the œsophagus, a sensation of heat in the head and face, the latter becoming red and congested; at the same time dizziness and precordial distress are experienced. The same phenomena occur in certain persons after eating palmito salad or the tender central portion of the bonga and of other palms.
The flowers are eaten in salad like the above-mentioned palmito. The seed is astringent and tænifuge; for the latter purpose it is given internally as a powder in a dose of from 16 to 24 grams. Its action is uncertain. The catechu which is obtained in India from the Bonga differs from that obtained from the Acacia Catechu and is a tonic analogous to rhatany and cinchona.