Health and Temperance by Woman's Work

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1889

Health and Temperance.

By Woman's Work

RICE AS FOOD AND MEDICINE.

Rice is among the most nutritious of all the articles of common diet. Indeed, there are only two others containing more nutriment—peas and beans; and these have only a fraction the advantage of rice. At the same time, rice is more digestible than peas and beans, requiring only one hour for its digestion, while peas and beans require over two hours. Ninety parts in one hundred of rice are nutritive, while oatmeal, peas, and beans, the only foods excelling in this respect, are respectively 93 and 92 per cent. in nutritive elements. Besides its value in nutritiveness and digestibility, rice is an excellent food on account of its heat-generating properties. Hence, though regarded as a very unsubstantial diet, it is really a very sustaining one, affording abundant and digestible elements for nourishment, and at the same time serving as fuel to keep up the heat of the body, which is no less necessary to life than nourishment. It is said that one pound of rice will generate more heat than four pounds of roast beef. But while rice is not a very "cooling diet," it is a good one even in fevers, on account of its nutritiveness and ready digestibility.

One of the very best combinations of food in all cases of sickness is rice well cooked and taken with milk. The dry or "Carolina mode" of cooking rice is even more digestible than when cooked with milk. The following are the directions for this. Take a clean stew-pan with a close-fitting top. Then take a clean piece of white muslin large enough to cover over the top of the pan and to hang down nearly to, but not quite in contact with, the bottom. Into the sack so formed, put the rice, pour over it two cupfuls of water, and put on the cover so as to hold up the muslin bag inside the vessel. Place the pan over a slow fire and the steam generated by the water will cook the rice. When thus prepared the grains will stand apart whole as when put into the vessel, yet they will be soft and more digestible than the semi-fluid gummy concoction served up in the common mode of cooking rice. The steamers attached to most stoves will answer in place of the muslin bag.

The object of these contrivances is to prevent contact of the rice with the vessel, and thus avoid burning or scorching; but this can be done with care, without anything of the kind. The only objection to rice as a food is its insipidity or tastelessness, but this can be obviated by suitable seasoning with salt, or other ingredients.

As a medicine in looseness of the bowel, nothing is better than rice thus cooked; or if more nourishment is required, it may be cooked with milk or put into the milk, hot, after cooking.

Most cases of diarrhea, when taken in the beginning, can be cured by this simple prescription: Go to bed; keep warm; drink but little fluids of any kind, and eat nothing except rice cooked dry, or with milk. But, if there is fever with thirst, drinks either cold or warm may be taken in moderation. It is a grievous error that all drinks should be forbidden in diarrhea. If fever is present cold drinks are necessary both for the comfort and the restoration of the patient. This thing of withholding drinks in fevers of any kind is a barbarism which has happily passed away among all intelligent physicians and people.