Body fluid

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Body fluid, bodily fluids, or biofluids are liquids originating from inside the bodies of living people. They include fluids that are excreted or secreted from the body as well as body water that normally is not.

The dominating content of body fluids is body water. Approximately 60-65% of body water is contained within the cells (in intracellular fluid) with the other 35-40% of body water contained outside the cells (in extracellular fluid). This fluid component outside of the cells includes the fluid between the cells (interstitial fluid), lymph and blood. There are approxmiately 6 to 10 liters of lymph in the body, compared to 3.5 to 5 liters of blood.[1]

List of body fluids

By type:

In plants:

  • Plant exudates

Body fluids and health

Body fluid is the term most often used in medical and health contexts. Modern medical, public health, and personal hygiene practices treat body fluids as potentially unclean. This is because they can be vectors for infectious diseases, such as sexually transmitted diseases or blood-borne diseases. Universal precautions and safer sex practices try to avoid exchanges of body fluids. Body fluids can be analysed in medical laboratory in order to find microbes, inflammation, cancers, etc.

Sampling

Methods of sampling of body fluids include:

Bodily fluids in religion and history

In many cultures, bodily fluids are viewed with disgust. However, blood plays an important symbolic role in Catholicism: the saved in paradise are said to be "have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb" Revelation 7:14[ 1]. In the eucharistic meal, the faithful eat and drink consecrated bread and wine. The dogma of transubstantiation states that the bread and the wine become the flesh and blood of Christ. There are many churches dedicated to the Holy Blood of Christ and there blood relics of saints such as San Gennaro.

Body fluids in art

A relatively new trend in contemporary art is to use body fluids in art, though there have been rarer uses of blood (and perhaps feces) for quite some time, and Marcel Duchamp used semen decades ago. Examples include:

  • The controversial Piss Christ (1987), by Andres Serrano, which is a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine;
  • Andy Warhol's Oxidations series, begun in 1977, in which he invited friends to urinate onto a canvas of metallic copper pigments, so that the uric acid would oxidize into abstract patterns;
  • Self (1991, recast 1996) by Marc Quinn, a frozen cast of the artist's head made entirely of his own blood;
  • Piss Flowers, by Helen Chadwick (1991–92), are twelve white-enameled bronzes cast from cavities made by urinating in snow (though this might not be characterized as the use of bodily fluids in art, just their use in preparation);
  • performances by Lennie Lee involving feces, blood, vomit from 1990
  • many paintings by Chris Ofili, which make use of elephant dung (from 1992).
  • Gilbert and George's The Naked Shit Pictures (1995)
  • Hermann Nitsch and Das Orgien Mysterien Theatre use urine, feces, blood and more in their ritual performances.
  • Franko B from 1990 blood letting performances.
  • The cover of the Metallica's album Load is an original artwork entitled "Semen and Blood III", one of three photographic studies by Andres Serrano created in 1990 by mingling the artist's own semen and bovine blood between two sheets of Plexiglas.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Lymphatic Congestion - Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment and Information". Diagnose-me.com. Retrieved 2012-11-14. 
  2. ↑ "Semen & Blood II". Artnet.com. Retrieved 2010-11-13. 
  • Paul Spinrad. (1999) The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids. Juno Books. ISBN 1-890451-04-5
  • John Bourke. (1891) Scatalogic Rites of All Nations. Washington, D.C.: W.H. Lowdermilk.
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