Rye

This is so well known in all the countries of this land, and especially to the country-population distributed thereon, that if I did describe it, they would presently say, I might as well have spared that labour. Its virtue follows.

Government and virtues : Rye is more digesting than wheat; the bread and the leaven thereof ripens and breaks imposthumes, boils, and other swellings. The meal of Rye put between a double cloth, and moistened with a little vinegar, and heated in a pewter dish, set over a chafing dish of coals, and bound fast to the head while it is hot, doth much ease the continual pains of the head. Matthiolus saith, that the ashes of Rye straw put into water, and steeped therein a day and a night, and the chops of the hands or feet washed therewith, doth heal them.