The friend who told me about the onion cure for insomnia said she'd come across it while looking for a saw in Gimbel's basement. She had stopped to listen to a bald demonstrator giving a spiel about a potato peeler, and she insisted that he suddenly announced to his drifting audience, "If you have trouble sleeping at night, here's what you do." He told them to slice a large onion and make a sandwich with rye or whole-wheat bread. He warned them that white bread wouldn't do at all. This was to be taken with a glass of milk at bedtime. I asked whether the onion was to be peeled, because I was puzzled as to why a man demonstrating potato peelers would branch off into a cure for insomnia. My friend said no, not to peel the onion, just cut off a quarter-inch-thick slice with an ordinary kitchen knife. She said it had workwed miraculously for her. Her husband had complained that she reeked of onion clear across the bedroom; but she implied delicately that as I wasn't married, this was a technical drawback that needn't concern me.

from "Say 'Hemlock' and Flop"