It seems pretty natural now, to ease the symptoms of a cold or flu with hot lemonade, spiked with some honey and/or whiskey. It hydrates the body, provides vitamin C, and soothes a sore throat, but it doesn't cure anything. However, the reason we enjoy hot lemonade when we feel sick goes back to the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic and the power of advertising.
The telegram first arrived at Sunkist’s sales office in Los Angeles: The East Coast needed lemons. The arrival of cheaper, Sicilian imports had been slowed by the war, and America’s new go-to citrus, the orange, had suffered a poor growing season. Demand for the little-used lemon was high and supplies were low. In Boston, wholesale prices had more than doubled in a month. Meanwhile in California, leafy lemon trees, finally recovered from the sweltering 1917 season, were heavy with fruit.
Countless home remedies emerged as Americans grappled with the disease, some placebo, some actual poison. From the pantry came the promise of health in the guise of red onions or black coffee or watered-down molasses or brandy with asafetida, a pungent spice common in Indian cooking. But only the lemon had the advertising know-how of Don Francisco and Lord & Thomas behind it.
The campaign advertising lemons never claimed it cured the flu, but they knew what to say to lead people to think so, even to the point of sucking lemons directly. Read that story at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: André Karwath)