From Chapter 3:
A further witness to the prevalence of smoking and to the enormous number of tobacco-sellers' shops is Camden, the antiquary. In his "Annales," 1625, he remarks with curious detail that since its introduction—"that Indian plant called Tobacco, or Nicotiana, is growne so frequent in use and of such price, that many, nay, the most part, with an insatiable desire doe take of it, drawing into their mouth the smoke thereof, which is of a strong scent, through a pipe made of earth, and venting of it againe through their nose; some for wantownesse, or rather fashion sake, and other for health sake, insomuch that Tobacco shops are set up in greater number than either Alehouses or Tavernes."

From Chapter 5:
The belief in the prophylactic power of tobacco was, however, very generally held. When Mr. Samuel Pepys on June 7, 1665, for the first time saw several houses marked with the ominous red cross, and the words "Lord, have mercy upon us" chalked upon the doors, he felt so ill at ease that he was obliged to buy some roll tobacco to smell and chew. There is nothing to show that Pepys even smoked, which considering his proficiency in the arts of good-fellowship, is perhaps a little surprising. Defoe, in his fictitious but graphic "Journal of the Plague Year in London," says that the sexton of one of the London parishes, who personally handled a large number of the victims, never had the distemper at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and was sexton of the parish to the time of his death. This man, according to Defoe, "never used any preservative against the infection other than holding garlic and rue in his mouth, and smoking tobacco."