My Dad - a great believer in natural medicine, long before it became fashionable - had a cure for tickly coughs. This involved cutting an onion in half, covering with brown sugar and leaving overnight. The resultant liquid we had to drink. The smell was horrible, and just smelling that 'cure' fermenting used to help me get better!!!
When I was a young child, if a tickly cough was keeping me awake at night, he would come in with a cup of warm (ionly whole milk those days), milk in which he had put some butter and then spoon feed this to me. Loved the TLC, and now we know that this was a good soother and works.