Pineapple

Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is the common name for a tropical plant and its edible fruit, which is actually a multiple fruit consisting of coalesced berries. Pineapple can be consumed fresh, canned or juiced and can be used in a variety of ways. It is popularly used in desserts, salads (usually tropical fruit salads, but it can vary), jams, yogurts, ice creams, various candies, as a complement to meat dishes and in fruit cocktail. The popularity of the pineapple is due to its sweet-sour taste.

Pineapple is used for many other things aside from consumption.

Pine-apple juice is the specific for diphtheria. This seems to have been first brought to the notice of Europeans by the fact that negroes living round about the swamps of Louisiana were observed to use it with great success. A writer who records this says: "The patient should be forced to swallow the juice. This fluid is of so pungent and corrosive a nature that it cuts out the diphtheria mucous and causes it to disappear."

Dr. Hillier, writing in the "Herald of Health" in 1897, says "Sliced pineapples, laid in pure honey for a day or two, when used in moderation, will relieve the human being from chronic impaction of the bowels, reestablish peristaltic motion, and induce perfect digestion."

"A slice of fresh pine-apple," writes Dr. Fernie, "is about as wise a thing as one can take by way of dessert after a substantial meal." This is because fresh pine-apple juice has been found to act upon animal food in very much the same way that the gastric juice acts within the stomach. But vegetarians should eat fresh fruit at the beginning of meals rather than at the end.