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Show LEMON. LEMON. ing very great eflicacy in dy sentery, remittent fever, thebelly- ach, putrid sore throat, and as being perfectly specific in diabetes and lientery. Citric acid is often used with great success for allaying vomiting: with this intention it is mixed with carbonate of potass, from whichit expels the carbonic acid with effervescence. This mixture should be drunk as soon asit is made; or the carbonic acid gas, on which actually the antiemetic powerofthis mixture ¢ epends, may be extricated in the stomach itself, by first swallowing the carbonate of potass dis- solved in water, and drinking immediately afterwards the citric acid properly sweetened. The doses are about a scruple of the carbonate dissolved. in eight or ten drachms of water, and an ounce of lemon juice, or an equivalent quantityof citric acid. Lemon juice is also an ingredient in manypleasant refrigerant drinks, which are of verygreat use in allaying febrile heat and thirst. Of these, the most generally useful is lemonade, or dijuted lemon juice, sweetened. We are now to speak to the cure of scurvy.—From what we ourselves have seen of the disease, or learned from the wri tings of authors, we believe that fresh esculent vegetables of all kinds will cure it; but that those fruits abounding with an acid, aes = * See Hist. Nat. 1. 12. c. 3; E $$ + See Hort. Oxon. ed. i. acid in different degrees of purity. This genus of fruit has ad- vantages aboveall others; for as it approaches to maturity the acid is not altered for the worse, but rather purer than before. The unripe gooseberry has thecitric and oxalic acids combined in its juice, and there can be no doubt but it is equally as eff tual as the lemon. I recommendedthis, says Dr. Trotter, to be carried to sea; and have since seen in a newspaper, where a number of scorbuticsailors in an Hast Indiaman were cured L in their passage outwards by some unripe gooseberries 4that were preserved for making tarts. ‘The malic a rds Just before it is ripe, but it has less afterwards. \ of scurvy which I treated was cured by apples. recovery of the seamen in the Berwick, at Torbay, sufficiently proves that apples are valnable antiscorbutics. The cases in which I last administered the juice of lemons and oranges for the cure of scurvy are worth narrating. Some time in November, 1789, eighty Irish convicts came from Newfoundland in company with the ships returning fromthat station to England. ‘These convicts, to the number of 130 or 140, had been shipped at Dublin some time before. The master of the vessel in which they sailed, had orders to land or dispose of them somewhere in the territories of the United States of America. Instead, however, of fulfilling his contract with government, and obeying orders, he resolved upon making the best bargain with his prisoners. ‘Those who had cash paid it to him for theirli- berty ; among the rest was a noted Roman catholic priest, who had been convicted of forgery. Whenhe hadstript them of all the money and clothes which they had, they were, men and women, turned on shore in the island of Newfoundland. Here, with the little provision he had given them, they were to make the best of it. Some perished in the woods from hunger and fatigue, and others reached different settlements in the island. The circumstances of their situation soon reached vice-admiral Milbank, then commander in chief on that station, who ordered themto be collected andsecu red, and a shipfitted to carry them Stix MEDICAL VIRTUE, Lemonjuice is a powerful and agreeable antiseptic. Its powers are much increased, according to Dr. Wright, by saturating it with muriate of soda. This mixture he recommends as possess- such as the citric class, are more effectual than others. Most vegetables possess in their recent state a portion of acid, though so small as not always to be perceived, and in proportionas it abounds in them, and perceptible to our taste, they have a-superior antiscorbutic quality. The lemon, lime, shaddock, and orange, in the order we haveset them down, give out the citric * first cultivator of this tree in Italy, yet it is evident it could not have been propagated there long before his time, as appears by the writings of Pliny*; noris its cultivation noticed by Varro, Cato, or Columella. After its introduction into Europe, we find Spain, Portugal, and France, becamesuccessively possessed ofthis valuable plant, with its congeners ; and the Hesperian fruits are nowproduced in such abundance,that their exportation gives rise to a lucrative branch of commerce. The lemontree, like the orange, is commonin our greenhouses; and, according to the Hortus Kewensis, was first cultiyated in Britain in the Oxford garden, previous to the year 1648 +. prLf Although it has been doubted whether Paladius wasreally the 63 CAPSS = Ge 662 |