Palay

Uses

All the people of Indo-China, China, Japan and the greater part of the Indian Archipelago eat rice as Europeans do bread.

In the Philippines an immense variety of rice grows and in the World’s Fair at Paris, in 1889, Señor D. Regino García, of Manila, presented a unique collection of 147 varieties. The rice grown in high lands above irrigation is called “arroz de secano” and mountain rice, and that grown in low and irrigated land is called “arroz de sementera” and swamp rice. The two kinds are equally valuable as food.

The proportion of starch in rice is large, but it contains but a small amount of gluten, and therefore a large amount must be eaten in order to obtain sufficient nutritive elements.

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In the Filipino therapeutics rice has an extensive use, especially in the form of a decoction called cange, which is commonly given in the treatment of diarrhœa and dysentery, with good results. Cooked as a sort of mush it may be used as a substitute for linseed poultices and has the great advantage of not becoming rancid. Roasted and powdered it is dusted upon wounds or abrasions of the skin and forms a dry and absorbent covering under which they heal rapidly.

It has lately been claimed that beriberi is due to a microorganism found in rice under certain abnormal conditions; this claim is not yet firmly established and beriberi is still one of the many problems in medicine which are awaiting solution.