My idea of considering things that seem blatantly obvious is to highlight how things get overlooked or omitted from consideration. One cannot quite say that the watery nature of the body is something easily overlooked. However, the ‘blatantly obviousness’ of our bodies consisting predominantly of water (60% by all accounts) means that we fail to explore what water is like or how that impinges upon us. What water is like has a direct bearing on how our watery existence manifests itself. Indeed, to raise the question ‘What is water like?’ seems rather odd.
We can all state the freezing and boiling points—although these vary with air pressure and with the purity of the water, etc. But what else can we bring to mind about what water is like? I suggest very little. ‘Wet’ is an obvious response, but what do we mean by wet or wetness?
For example, take a look at the following:
Water (in general)
Properties of water
Textbooks of anatomy and physiology talk about the characteristics of atoms and molecules, but rarely do they talk about what is perhaps the most important molecule of all: water. Without it there would be no body chemistry, no physiology, and no anatomy. For a start, water acts as a medium within which biochemistry can take place.
After that, there are so many other characteristics and properties of water that for me to try to list them would be pointless. Not least because I am not a biochemist and their biochemical roles I am not qualified to discuss. What I do want to do is highlight how little the characteristics and properties of water are appreciated when studying physiology. The physiological significance of the nature of water is under-represented in standard textbooks.
A favourite physiology textbook when I was a student was known simply as BDS.’ (This, I understand, came from the initials of the surnames of the original editors.) More precisely, it was Textbook of Physiology and Biochemistry then edited by Bell, Emslie-Smith, and Paterson. It was into its 9th edition when I was a student and appears to have gone through only a couple more editions—with the altered title ‘Textbook of Physiology’—before’ going out of print.
Its 9th edition is the only edition of a physiology textbook I know that had a chapter devoted to water. Indeed, it is the first chapter in that book on a specific topic. The opening chapter, which it immediately follows, is simply entitled ‘Introduction.’ Entitled ‘The Properties of Water,’ that chapter gave water a prominent place, and the student reader is left with the impression that a lot of what followed owed much to what water was like. Thus, water was something of a foundation upon which much depended.
I have been able to trace copies of the final two editions of BDS when there were changes to its editorship. Sadly, neither gives water as prominent a place as in the 9th edition. Instead the consideration of water is subsumed into the more general discussions about bodily fluids, water balance, etc.
In what I have tried to highlight, there is also a nagging question: ‘What would life have been like had the properties of water been slightly different to how they are?’
