had spoken "against the inordinate affection to and the
immoderate use of tobacco which did caus much trouble in some of my
hearers and some reformation did follow." He then goes on to record
two remarkable examples of such "reformation"--examples, he says,
"which did stirr me up in that case more than ordinary. The one I had
from my reverend Brother Mr. Robert Whittaker, concerning a professor
[_i.e._ a person who professed to have been "converted"] who could not
follow his calling without his pipe in his mouth, but that text Isaiah
55, 2, coming into his mind hee layd aside his taking of tobacco. The
other instance was of a profane person living nigh Haslingdon (who was
but poor) and took up his time in the trade of smoking and also spent
what should reliev his poor family. This man dreamed that he was
taking tobacco, and that the devill stood by him filling one pipe upon
another for him. In the morning hee fell to his old cours
notwithstanding; thinking it was but a dream: but when hee came to
take his pipe, hee had such an apprehension that the devill did indeed
stand by him and doe the office as hee dreamed that hee was struck
speechless for a time and when hee came to himself hee threw his
tobacco in the fire and his pipes at the walls; resolving never to
meddle more with it: soe much money as was formerly wasted by the week
in to serving his family afterward weekly."

Among the many medicinal virtues attributed to tobacco was its
supposed value as a preservative from contagion at times of plague.
Hearne, the antiquary, writing early in 1721, said that he had been
told that in the Great Plague of London of 1665 none of those who kept
tobacconists' shops suffered from it, and this belief no doubt
enhanced the medical reputation of the weed. I have also seen it
stated that during the cholera epidemics of 1831, 1849, and 1866 not
one London tobacconist died from that disease; but good authority for
the statement seems to be lacking. Hutton, in his "History of Derby,"
says that when that town was visited by the plague in 1665, that at
the "Headless-cross ... the market-people, having their mouths primed
with tobacco as a preservative, brought their provisions.... It was
observed, that this cruel affliction never attempted the premises of a
tobacconist, a tanner or a shoemaker." Whatever ground there may have
been for the belief in the prophylactic effect of smoking, there can
be no doubt that in the seventeenth centur