429 ‘ MEALS MEDICINAL. 
LAVER (See SEAWEEDS). 
LEEK (See Onton). 
LEMON. 
Tue special dietetic value of Lemons (Citrus limonum) consists 
in their potash salts, citrate, malate, and tartrate, which are 
severally antiscorbutic, and of service in promoting biliary 
digestion. Each fluid ounce of the fresh juice contains about 
forty-four grains of citric acid, with gum, sugar, and a residuum 
which yields when incinerated, potash, lime, and phosphoric 
acid. The exterior rind furnishes a grateful aromatic bitter, 
with an essential volatile fragrant oil. Lemon juice exercises 
certain sedative effects, whereby it can allay nervous palpitation 
of the heart, and can alleviate the pain of cancerous ulceration 
when invading the tongue. Dr. Brandini, of Florence, discovered 
this remarkable anodyne property of fresh lemon juice in cancer 
of the tongue, by the case of a patient who when suffering 
grievously from that dire affection found marvellous relief to 
the part by casually sucking a lemon to slake his feverish thirst. 
As a substitute for the lemon juice, citric acid may be employed, 
dissolved in cold water, one drachm to eight fluid ounces of 
water, to be applied with a camel-hair brush ; likewise, at other 
times, pledgets of lint saturated with the juice, or lotion. For 
a cold in the head, if the juice of a ripe lemon be squeezed into 
the palm of the hand, and strongly sniffed into the nostrils two 
or three separate times, a cure will generally be set going. 
“Into an oval form the citrons rolled 
Beneath thick coats their juicy pulp unfold; 
From these the palate feels a pungent smart, 
Which, though they sting the tongue, yet heal the heart.” 
Cole’s Adam in Eden says the fruit of the pome-citron tree 
being like to the heart in form, is a very sovereign cordial for 
the same. 
It is remarkable that the acid of lemons, whilst harmful to 
rabbits, cats, and other small animals, by lowering the heart's 
action, and liquefying the blood, does not diminish the blood’s 
coagulability in man, but will specially correct the thin impover- 
ished liquidity of that circulating fluid which constitutes scurvy- 
Throughout Italy, a decoction of fresh Lemons is extolled as a 
specific against intermittent fever. Also Lemon-juice is decidedly 
