Bodily fluids
Parents: body - bodily function
Types: blood - female ejaculate - feces - semen - urine - vomit
Feces, while not generally classed as a body fluid, are often treated similarly to body fluids, and are sometimes fluid or semi-fluid in nature.
The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids (1994) - Paul Spinrad
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Defition
- Amniotic fluid surrounding a fetus (which is released to the outside world in childbirth)
- Blood and blood plasma
- Cowper's fluid or pre-ejaculatory fluid
- Female ejaculate
- Interstitial fluid
- Lymph
- Menses
- Milk
- Mucus (including snot and phlegm)
- Pus
- Saliva
- Sebum (skin oil)
- Semen
- Tears
- Sweat
- Urine
- Vaginal lubrication
- Vomit --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fluids [Aug 2004]
Body fluids in art
A relatively new trend in contemporary art is to use body fluids in art. Examples include:
* The controversial Piss Christ (1987), by Andres Serrano, which is a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine;
* 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-enamelled bronzes cast from cavities made by urinating in snow;
* 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.
Humour as fluid
Humour (humor in American English) is a form of entertainment and a form of human communication, intended to make people laugh and feel happy. The origins of the word "humour" lie in the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids, or humours, controlled human health and emotion. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour [Jul 2004]
The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids (1994) - Paul Spinrad
For popular culture mavens, there is really no substitute for the RE/Search series of guides and homages to various strange and wonderful components of the contemporary scene. In this volume, the subject is bodily fluids; fortunately (?) fluidity is not necessarily the same as liquidity here, as such chapter headings as "Feces," "Flatus," "Vomit," etc., attest. Lest the faint-of-stomach find these terms repellent, it must be noted that Spinrad's treatment of these subjects is detached and tasteful, so far as that is possible. Like previous RE/Search volumes (Incredibly Strange Music and Incredibly Strange Films, for instance), the book is both entertaining and informative. There is really no other place to find information on excreta in medicine and a biography of Thomas Crapper under the same cover with data from surveys of various personal excretory habits and a brief life of Joseph Pujol, the "Fartiste." The appended publications list and survey methodology and questionnaire comprise the icing on this, uh, cake. -Mike Tribby
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