The Musée du Fumeur is a private museum of smoking. The museum is located in a smoke shop. The collection contains smoking instruments including European pipes, 17th century clay pipes, Native American ceremonial pipes, hookahs, Chinese opium pipes, Egyptian sheeshas, and snuffboxes, as well as cigars, tobacco samples, hemp-fiber clothing, and etchings, portraits, photographs, videos, and scientific drawings of tobacco plants. Explained through the museum’s website, “the usual objects of the smoker in different places or times mingle with the smoked plants around the world: the tobacco leaves are side by side with the sinsemilla flowers; the sieve for extracting the hemp resin, the cigar mold and the briar mouthpiece accompany the fragile earthen pipes of the eighteenth century or copper, which Chinese dignitaries wore on their belts to smoke opium” (museum website). As elucidated by the museum website, smoking is a unison of both the culture of a civilization and the geographical, geological environment which encompasses a civilization. Smoking, in a sense, resembles the balance between an individual and his or her relationship with the place in the world that he/she is located, a representation of the active, two way dynamic between an individual and mother nature.
Smoking in a way is a sign of how plants, herbs, and naturally occurring substances have been used throughout history to affect changes on the brains in order to feel more alert, think from a different perspective, or reduce cognitive decline. Nicotine has also been found to have cognitive enhancing properties on humans (NIH nicotine). Another naturally-occurring substance on the global spotlight right now is cannabis. So many studies are being conducted right now to find the medicinal properties that the plant can provide. One specific study from 2017 suggests cannabis may help to manage chronic pain( NIH cannabis). It is likely exploratory research will continue to be done on nicotine, THC/CDB, and other naturally-occurring substances to examine how these compounds interact with our neuronal and biochemical networks in medicinally beneficial ways.
The widespread use of Tabaco in activities like smoking can demonstrate how humans have used nature to induce cognitive effects in order to enhance quality of life. Though there is much controversy over the ingestion and use of these chemicals, there is no doubt that many plants, roots, and other vegetation can offer an abundance of cures or desired experiences for many by interacting with the brain of an individual. Nature is, after all, the model for pharmaceutically sold and produced compounds.
