For what it's worth:
Other more common solutions were to use scraped horseradish cooked in a sugar syrup or slices of salt pork covered with red pepper and wrapped around the neck.
If you had the misfortune of also having a sore throat, there were many wise old treatments. The most common was to take a sock "straight off the foot" and wrap it aound the neck while consuming a dose of loaf sugar and brandy. In 1856, you might take a daily wash in cold water to prevent swollen glands, drink Holland Gin mixed with herbs, sniff lemon juice up into the nostrils, sprinkle snuff on a scarf before wearing or rub the affected area with bear or goose grease.
When my own children were sick with a cold, my husband's grandmother always suggested a mixture of camphor and goose grease, warmed, and then rubbed on the chest and back. She also made them a "pneumonia jacket" which was a flannel vest filled with cotton batton. Of course, the first time our doctor saw my son wearing it, he immediately ripped it off and said that we were suffocating him. So much for old remedies. In my own home growing up, all winter long there were tin cans filled with Friar's Balsam sitting on the radiators, as a measure of prevention. I can still smell it.
About 1887, salt pork simmered in vinegar was applied to the throat, or the patient was made gargle with a mixture of sulphuric Acid and glycerin. And of course the ever popular poultices applied to the chest, that consisted of a mixture of vile smelling ingredients like onions, leeks and garlic, gave a common odour to an invalid's room. If you think warm onions laying on your chest smells bad; wait 'til they've been there a few days. It's a good thing our ancestors also had a cure for sore and weak eyes.
But if you preferred a more scientific approach, the New England Housekeeper of 1845, offered this:
"Soak the feet in warm water; roast an onion and put the heart of it into the ear; heat a brick and wrap it up, and apply to the side of the head. When the feet are taken from the water, bind roasted onion on them."
Or from the 1881 Mother Hubbard's Cupboard published in Hamilton, Ontario: "Roast a piece of lean mutton, squeeze out the juice and drop it into the ear as hot as it can be borne."
In 1894, Light on Dark Corners offered the following:
COUGH - Boil one ounce of flaxseed in a pint of water, strain, and add a little honey, one ounce of rock candy, and the juice of three lemons. Mix and boil well. Drink as hot as possible.
FOR COUGHS, COLDS, ETC. - Syrup of morphia, three ounces; syrup of tar, three and a half ounces; chloroform, one troy ounce; glycerine, one troy ounce. Mix them. Dose, a teaspoonful three or four times a day.
DIARRHOEA - The following prescription is generally all that will be necessary. Acetate of lead, eight grains; gumaric, two drachms; acetate of morphia, one grain; and cinnamon water, eight ounces. Take a teaspoonful every three hours.
