THE LEMON. 
DR. ALBERT SCHNEIDER, 
Northwestern University School of Pharmacy, Chicago. 
THE lemon is the fruit of a small 
tree from ten to fifteen feet high. 
It is not particularly beautiful, 
being rather shrubby in its ap- 
pearance. It is an evergreen, bearing 
leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year 
round. The flowers occur singly in 
the axils of the leaves. The calyx is 
persistent, that is, it does not drop off 
like the corolla, and may be found at- 
tached to the base of the fruit. The 
corolla consists of five spreading petals 
of a purplish-pink color. 
The lemons of the market are from 
cultivated plants of which there is a 
large number of varieties. These culti- 
vated varieties or forms took their 
origin from the wild lemon trees 
native in northern India, in the mount- 
ain forests of the southern Himalayas, 
in Kumoan, and Sikkim. 
Lemons have been known for a long 
time. They were brought to the notice 
of the Greeks during the invasion of 
Alexander the Great into Media where 
the golden-yellow fruit attracted the 
attention of the warriors who gave 
them the name of Median apples 
{Mala medico). Later, Greek warriors 
also found this fruit in Persia, and 
hence named it Persian apples {Mala 
persica). The eminent Greek philoso- 
pher and naturalist Theophrastus, 390 
B. C., described the fruit as inedible, 
though endowed with a fragrant odor, 
and having the power to keep away in- 
sects. On account of this latter prop- 
erty the so-called Median apple was, by 
some, supposed to be identical with the 
fruit of the cedar {Kedros) and there- 
fore received the name "Citrus" from 
which is derived "citrone," the Ger- 
man name, and " citronnier," the 
French name for the fruit. Our word 
lemon is said to have been derived 
from the Indian word limu and the 
Arabian word limun. It seems that at 
the time of the great Roman historian 
and naturalist, Pliny (23-79 A. D.), the 
lemon was not yet extensively culti- 
vated. Dioscarides (50 A. D.) speaks 
highly of the medicinal virtues of the 
bitter and acrid wild-growing lemon. 
Caelius Aurelianus recommends lemon 
juice in gout and fevers. In 150 A. D., 
the lemon tree, evidently introduced, 
was found growing about Naples and 
in Sardinia, but the fruit was still inedi- 
ble. About the third century cultiva- 
tion had so far improved the fruit that 
it could be eaten. 
The Arabians are credited with first 
having introduced the lemon tree into 
southern Europe. The noted Arabian 
geographer, Edrisi, twelfth century, 
describes the lemon as very sour and 
about the size of an apple and the 
plant as growing only in India. This 
latter statement is, however, erroneous 
as the lemon had already been exten- 
sively cultivated in southern and east- 
ern Spain, where it was introduced by 
the agriculturally-inclined Moors. It 
has been cultivated for many centuries 
in nearly all of the countries bordering 
on the MediterraneanSea andis nowalso 
extensively cultivated in the tropical 
and sub-tropical countries and islands 
of the Western Hemisphere. One var- 
iety or species, {Citrus lemetta), is a 
native of the East Indies and is exten- 
sively cultivated in the West Indies. 
Lemon trees are found everywhere in 
the larger green houses and conserva- 
tories along with the closely related 
orange {Citrus vulgaris.) 
As the result of cultivation there are 
now about fifty varieties of lemons in 
existence. Some of these are compar- 
atively sweet or rather insipid and are 
therefore known as sweet lemons. 
The sour varieties are, however, more 
generally cultivated. Lest I forget I 
will here state that the lemon is not 
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