18 MARCH 1955, Page 13

'About 1929 the messman at the Navigation School at Ports-

mouth told me that he always carried a lemon in his pocket day and night as a cure for rheumatics. He said it was extra- ordinary how it relieved him, and showed me a peculiarly wizened-looking lemon from which he alleged that the good- ness had gone into him. In 1950 a vegetable roundsman who was out in all weathers complained to me that he had the rheumatics "something crool." Seeing that his complexion was as florid as the messman's twenty-one years before, I adopted a confident air and prescribed the lemon-carrying. He has never ceased to thank me and tells his friends. In wide world travel I have often heard of this citrus-carrying but only these two hard-headed business men have personally demonstrated it to me!' I have vague recollections of hearing of people carrying such things as cut potatoes, onions and other vege- tables for similar reasons but never came across a lemon- carrier.