Since they could not make kissing illegal, doctors recommended sucking on a lemon after kissing your sweetheart. It was meant to kill off any yucky germs from the one you love. The article below is from a newspaper published in 1912.
Now Comes the “Lemon Kiss”
It’s Sane, Sanitary and Auto Puckering
Dr. Paul S. Hunter of the Colorado board of health advises a young man to take a lemon in his pocket when he calls on his lady friend.
The lemon is not to be taken as an intimation that the girl is not a peach in the garden of love. Dr. Hunter agrees with other scientists that kissing spreads disease. He says kissing cannot be stopped by law and the use of the hygienic screen is not practicable.
“While a lemon cannot be named in the class of disinfectants,” says Dr. Hunter, “yet it is recognized as being more or less of a disinfectant. Therefore, if a girl and her fellow would suck a lemon after each kiss it might help some.”
Indeed it might help some. If you can only persuade the girl to suck a lemon she’s bound to pucker up her lips. The more lemon, the more pucker; the more pucker, the more kisses.
[Source: The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois newspaper). May 13, 1912]
