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In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. Preface to 1828 Dictionary
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TOBAC'CO, n. [so named from Tabaco, a province of Yucatan, in Spanish America, where it was first found by the Spaniards.]
A plant, a native of America, of the genus Nicotiana, much used for smoking and chewing and in snuff. As a medicine, it is narcotic. Tobacco has a strong disagreeable smell, and an acrid taste. When first used it sometimes occasions vomiting; but the practice of using it in any form, soon conquers distaste, and forms a relish for it that is strong and almost unconquerable.
An American plant
(Nicotiana Tabacum) of the Nightshade family, much used for smoking
and chewing, and as snuff. As a medicine, it is narcotic, emetic, and
cathartic. Tobacco has a strong, peculiar smell, and an acrid
taste.
* The name is extended to other species of the genus, and to some unrelated plants, as Indian tobacco (Nicotiana rustica, and also Lobelia inflata), mountain tobacco (Arnica montana), and Shiraz tobacco (Nicotiana Persica). The leaves of the plant prepared for smoking,
chewing, etc., by being dried, cured, and manufactured in various
ways.
Tobacco box (Zoöl.), the common
American skate. -- Tobacco camphor. (Chem.)
See Nicotianine. -- Tobacco man, a
tobacconist. [R.] -- Tobacco pipe.
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