mineral salts, and water.

Gerard says: "The fruit is good to be given to them that have weake,
and queasie stomackes."

A playful example of the declension of a Latin substantive is given
thus:--

_Musa, Musoe_,
The Gods were at tea:
_Musoe, Musam_,
Eating Raspberry jam:
_Musa, Musah_,
Made by Cupid's mamma.

RHUBARB (Garden). _see_ Dock, _page_ 159.

RICE.

Rice, or Ryse, the grain of _Oryza sativa_, a native cereal of India,
is considered here scarcely as a Herbal Simple, but rather as a
common article of some medicinal resource in the store cupboard of
every English house-hold, and therefore always at band as a
vegetable remedy.

Among the Arabs Rice is considered a sacred food: [462] and their
tradition runs that it first sprang from a drop of Mahomet's
perspiration in Paradise.

Being composed almost exclusively of starch, and poorer in
nitrogen, as well as in phosphoric acid, than other cereals, it is less
laxative, and is of value as a demulcent to palliate irritative
diarrhoea, and to allay intestinal distress.

A mucilage of Rice made by boiling the well-washed grain for some
time in water, and straining, contains starch and phosphate of lime
in solution, and is therefore a serviceable emollient. But when
needed for food the grain should be steamed, because in boiling it
loses the little nitrogen, and the greater part of the lime phosphate
which it has scantily contained.

Rice bread and Rice cakes, simply made, are very light and easy of
digestion. The gluten confers the property of rising on dough or
paste made of Rice flour. But as an article of sustenance Rice is not
well suited for persons of fermentative tendencies during the
digestion of their food, because its starch is liable to undergo this
chemical change in the stomach.

Dr. Tytler reported in the _Lancet_ (1833), cases resembling
malignant cholera from what he termed the _morbus oryzoeus_, as
provoked by the free and continued use of Rice as food. And
Boutins, in 1769, published an account of the diseases common to
the East Indies, in which he stated that when Rice is eaten more or
less exclusively, the vision becomes impaired. But neither of these
allegations seems to have been afterwards authoritatively confirmed.

Chemically, Rice consists of starch, fat, fibrin, mineral matter such
as phosphate of lime, cellulose, and water.

A spirituous liquor is made in China from the grain of Rice, and