CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

RICE

Description. This grain, or corn, rises up with a stronger stalk than wheat, about a yard high, with sundry joints, and a large thick leaf at each of them, like the reed; at the top it bears a spiked tuft spread into branches, whose blooming is purplish, with the seed standing severally on them, inclosed in a hard brown straked husk, and an arm at the hed of every one of them, which being hulled is very white, of the bigness almost of wheat corns, blunt at both ends.

Place. It was originally brought from the East Indies, being the chiefest corn they live upon there, and through all Ethiopia, Africa, and has thence been brought into Syria, Egypt, Italy, &c. It delights to grow in moist ground.

Time. It is ripe about the middle of autumn; in some places it yields two crops a year.

Government and virtues. It is a Solar grain, and taken more as food than medicine. Still it is of physical use to stay the lasks and fluxes of the stomach and belly, especially if it be a little parched before it is used, and steel quenched in the milk wherein it is boiled, being somewhat binding and drying: boiled in milk with sugar and cinnamon, it is thought to increase seed. The flour of the rice is of the same porperty, and is sometimes put into cataplasms that are applied to repel humours from flowing or falling to the place, adn aslo to women's breasts to stay inflammations.