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[Vactor]

inspired by this post: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=34834.555

SurgeonDwarfs should use distilled water as an anesthetic while doing surgeries, it wouldn't be necessary, but would aid in the task.  This could be produced at a still by a health care dwarf.

[Grendus]

Just a question: how does distilled water reduce pain? Booze maybe, alcohol suppresses neural function reducing the sensation of pain, but medically distilled water is only useful for cleaning out wounds.

I understand that you think that thread is funny, but suggestions should be serious. Leave the jokes to the general discussion forum.

[sonerohi]

Dwarves use reversed systems for sobriety and drunkenness. It makes sense that if they replace water with booze in their diet, they would replace booze with water in their healthcare.

[Vactor]

I guess you haven't played dwarf fortress, where water serves to supress neural functioning in dwarves.

Once you remove the grime normally found in water you might have something pure enough to act as an anesthetic

and yes this is a sincere suggestion.  DF is a game that has elements of humor within it.

[eerr]

but this is already how we treat injured dwarves...

[Timst]

Well I don't know.

Humans drink water on an everyday basis, and are happy to drink booze for fun.
Dwarves drink booze on a an everyday basis, and ARE NOT happy to drink water.

And I read somewhere that it's not the consumption of water that slow dwarves, but the non-consumption of booze, so I don't really know if distilled water could be considered an anesthetic. But very strong alcohol (like 90 %) could sure be used. They're already used to disinfect wounds in the real life, so that'll make sense.

[Starver]

Well I don't know.

Humans drink water on an everyday basis, and are happy to drink booze for fun.
Dwarves drink booze on a an everyday basis, and ARE NOT happy to drink water.

Booze is to dwarfs what water is to humans.
Perhaps water is to dwarfs as medicine is to humans?  (Yucky, but necessary when ill.)

Not that a human could live on the likes of cough syrup as a replacement for water (well, there'd be repurcussions, if only bad teeth).

So.  It's not so simple that Alcholol <=> Water.  But then if it was just an inversion, it'd be plain parody (as in "Going out for an English", from Goodness Gracious Me, those who know it) as opposed to a logical (if alternate) arrangement of reality aimed to create self-consistent elements within the game 'universe'.  Of something. 

[HatfieldCW]

Maybe distilled water could be on the water hierarchy, like  Stagnant -> Murky -> River -> Clear (either rainwater or filtered somehow) -> Distilled for quality checks when used for washing wounds (or maybe even cooking)?  It could also desalinate to a barrel, allowing ocean forts to have full waterskins and medical supplies without having to build a contained aquifer.

[irmo]

This is frankly ridiculous. The point of the dwarves/alcohol thing is not that "water and alcohol are reversed for them". It's that they like booze. Humans in medieval villages drank a lot of beer, too.

The idea of dwarves having some weird alcohol-based physiology is an in-joke among fans about a quirk of the game mechanics. Let's not take it too seriously, please.

[Talith]

This is frankly ridiculous. The point of the dwarves/alcohol thing is not that "water and alcohol are reversed for them". It's that they like booze. Humans in medieval villages drank a lot of beer, too.

The idea of dwarves having some weird alcohol-based physiology is an in-joke among fans about a quirk of the game mechanics. Let's not take it too seriously, please.

QFT

[Luke_Prowler]

agreed.

also, you're not suppost to drink Distilled Water. something about exploding cells.

[Silverionmox]

agreed.

also, you're not suppost to drink Distilled Water. something about exploding cells.

The distilled water dissolves a lot of minerals that your body needs. If your kidneys don't get rid of it soon enough, your organical fluids become too diluted to live.

[Starver]

agreed.

also, you're not suppost to drink Distilled Water. something about exploding cells.

The distilled water dissolves a lot of minerals that your body needs. If your kidneys don't get rid of it soon enough, your organical fluids become too diluted to live.

But it's not just distilled water.  Too much 'normal' water is bad for you, for the same reason.  Utterly pure water isn't much worse than tapwater-pure.  Particularly bad examples of tapwater notwithstanding, though I can't imagine that any potable sample of water (up to and including one with an 'ideal' mix of isotonic salts/etc) could not continue to dissolve more salts, and thus dilute the body's own systems when imbibed.

You might want to read as a frexample (but ignoring some of the reader-comments) something like: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6263029.stm

Beer (apart from the "hic"-quotient) was only really more popular in times past because the water you got through it (either treated by the brewing process, or 'diluting'/eradicating the nastiness in water by after-the-fact diultion) was better than most plain water supplies (i.e. in areas with a non-minimal population density affecting the quality).  Which in DF terms means that the Original 7, upon arrival in pristine lands, shouldn't have a preference towards beer and against water if they have a river flowing through it without any industrialisation or bodily fluids (most notable blood) currently affecting it.  Maybe when you start to reach a significant proportion of the immigrant population cap, but I think dwarfs just like beer/ale/wine/etc.  Not as an overriding physiological thing, but certainly a racial tendency with suitable adaptations to their biology.  Like how carrion eaters can deal with rotting meat.  (There's no reason why they can't deal with fresh meat, aside from the specialisations that haven't the physical ability to consume flesh until it loses a certain material integrity, but their biological imperative keeps them away from it and/or trying to kill certain prey themselves because those that did found themselves in dangerously close competition with the primary predators...  Or suchlike.  That part's not intended as a direct and fully-paralleled analogy.)

But who knows? Well, apart from Toady, that is...

[Felblood]

Not knowing why beer was less likely to make you sick than polluted water, many peoples held that alcohol was actually nutrient, vital to the immune system, and continued drinking it when moving to new frontiers, where the water was less nasty.

Plus, everybody knows that all dwarves are alcoholics. That's sort of the joke.

[Pilsu]

The idea of dwarves having some weird alcohol-based physiology is an in-joke among fans about a quirk of the game mechanics. Let's not take it too seriously, please.

Except dwarves are literally alcohol dependent, growing increasingly lethargic and slow when subsisting on water.

I wonder if it affects combat