BOSTON, Dec. 30— A former bartender and a doctor have a bitter cure for hiccups, if the victim can stomach it. They advise hiccupers to eat a lemon wedge of the size served at bars, saturated with Angostura bitters. Sugar can be added to make it go down more easily, they said, and the rind should not be consumed.

David S. Nolan, the bartender, and Dr. Jay Howard Herman wrote in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine that the remedy cured hiccups in 14 of the 16 the people they tried it on, ''including two cases of initial treatment failure that was overcome after a second treatment within five minutes.'' That is a success rate of 88 percent. Method Known to Bartenders

Mr. Nolan and Dr. Herman defined the response as stopping hiccups within a minute for at least two hours. The two, from Baltimore, said the method had been known for a long time to bartenders but had not been accorded scientific recognition. They said they were unsure what the active ingredient was.

There was one qualification: The treatment was for hiccups caused by alcohol. ''All subjects had ethanol-induced hiccups that were unresponsive to traditional treatment,'' the two wrote. ''Some subjects were treated more than once, but were hiccup-free for at least one month.''

Whether other types of hiccups would succumb to the cure was unknown. ''Further clinical trials are in progress,'' they wrote. Hiccups are caused by involuntary spasms of the diaphragm, the thin sheet of muscle under the lungs, followed by closing of the space between the vocal cords and windpipe.

They are triggered most of the time by irritation of the nerves controlling the muscles involved in breathing. Causes can include swallowing hot or irritating substances, pneumonia, alcoholism, stomach and intestinal disorders, pregnancy, bladder irritation and other conditions.

Raising the carbon dioxide in the blood is the most common way of stopping hiccups, and there are all sorts of ways of doing that, most involving slowing down breathing. Cures Handed Down

Some of the more common methods handed down from generation to generation are holding the breath, rebreathing air from a paper bag, drinking water rapidly, swallowing dry bread, crushed ice or granulated sugar or startling the victim so that he catches his breath.

Other more drastic methods and drugs, requiring professional help, are in order when simple methods fail. But even these can fail, and hiccups can last for years.

The longest bout of hiccups on record belongs to Charles Osborn of Anthon, Iowa. Mr. Osborn started hiccuping in 1922 and he hasn't stopped since, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.