using tobacco, and not very
common we hope, is what is called plugging, that is, thrusting long
pellets or rolls of tobacco up the nose, and keeping them there during
the night. As a dentifrice it is used in many parts of the world. We
have had an opportunity of witnessing this fact in various parts of
South America, but especially in Brazil, where respectable women do not
scruple openly to use tobacco for this purpose. We have known several
very respectable individuals of both sexes in our own country, who use
snuff as a tooth powder, and with them its employment was just as much a
habit as any other mode of using tobacco. These have been generally West
Indians, or persons who have resided much in the West India islands. In
some of our southern states, tobacco is much used among the ladies as a
dentifrice. Indeed there appears to prevail generally, a very strong
opinion, that it is an excellent preservative of the teeth, which is
certainly an error; though we think it probable that the stimulus of
tobacco, to those who use it in excess, may become in a certain degree
necessary to their preservation.

Tobacco is truly a leveller. It equalizes the monarch and the hind, and
is acceptable to the sage as well as the sailor. "Its smoke," says
Thomson, "rising in clouds from the idolatrous altar of the native
Mexican, opened the world of spirits to his delirious imagination,"
while it has "even assisted in extending the boundaries of intellect, by
aiding the contemplations of the Christian philosopher." If we advert
to the irrefragable proofs of the virulent properties of this plant, and
the various arguments which have been urged against its habitual use, we
cannot fail to be struck with the extraordinary fact, that so large a
portion of mankind should voluntarily struggle through its repugnant
qualities, both of taste and effect, until by habit its stimulus grows
pleasurable, and the system becomes mithridated against its poison! It
would almost seem as if the use of some substance of this class were
necessary to the intellectual and physical economy of man, since no
nation nor age, of which we have any account, has been found without. Of
the various masticatories which have been in general use, if we except
opium, tobacco is unquestionably the most pernicious. Although its
moderate use may not shorten life, or prove perceptibly hurtful to
health, yet its excessive employment certainly generates many formidable
disorders, p