150 Oranges and Lemons of India. 



mittent fevers and their consequences.* If chemists 

 could be induced to take up the subject, and endeavour 

 to extract the medicinal principle in some cheap form, 

 a new departure in febrifuges and splenifuges might 

 be brought about. The raw material can be grown 

 everywhere, and during the season of 1885-6, it was 

 stated that the fruit was allowed to rot on the trees in 

 Sicily, because it did not pay the growers to pack and 

 ship it to other countries, prices having been consider- 

 ably lowered by competition from various parts of the 

 world. If, therefore, the active principle could be 

 cheaply extracted, not only the superabundant fruit of 

 the world would be utilised, but a more extended market 

 found for this important fruit. In Appendix, No. 48, 

 will be found the receipt for making this decoction, 

 according to the method used by the Italian peasants. 



It would be interesting to find out whether the active 

 principle exists ready-made in the fruit, or is brought 

 out by the action of the boiling citric acid on the 

 essential oil and bitter principle of the rind, and whether 

 it exists only in some citrus, or in all the fruits of the 

 genus, and whether it also exists in the leaves, bark, 

 and wood of these trees. In Appendix, No. 46, c and d y 

 are given the native modes of administering the lemon 

 or lime for spleen, and in No. 52 similar uses are made 

 of a kind of orange. 



In the " Penny Cyclopaedia" the following occurs : 

 " In the West Indies, lemon juice, with common salt, 

 is used in dysentery, remittent fever, dry belly-ache 

 (colic), putrid sore throat, &c. Dr. Wright also 

 recommends it in diabetes, and lientery." 



" According to Sir G. Blane, the solution of citric 

 acid is not so efficacious in preventing and curing sea- 

 scurvy, as the recent lemon-juice." 



* Vide Appendix, No. 52, and pi. 40, fig. d. 



