Second Opinion: Quite Clearly a Miracle Molecule
Water is a Truly Extraordinary Substance,
says James Le Fanu

Water is a miracle, both in the sense that we could not do without it, but also in the sense that it appears to defy some fundamental laws of physics. Thus when water solidifies as ice it might be expected to behave as other liquids, to become denser and sink, so that rivers would freeze from the bottom up.

Instead, water becomes less dense on freezing and thus floats on the surface, below which fish can carry on swimming happily. Then its boiling point is also unexpectedly high and this reluctance to heat up ensures that the oceans stay cool, thus preventing global warming. For these and other reasons water has become an object of veneration in new age circles, the most direct evidence for the existence of some Divine Being.

This may be so, but what has also only become clear very recently, as Robert Matthews points out in the New Scientist, is that these remarkable properties of water are also the cause of the shape and thus the function of the 30,000 different types of protein from which life (and we) are made. And that is a most extraordinary thing.

Here too lies the explanation for the many therapeutic uses for this seemingly innocuous, colourless and tasteless liquid: in preventing dehydration, obviously, but also flushing through the kidneys, curing sore throats, burns, aches and pains and constipation, relieving respiratory disorders when inhaled as steam, easing strained muscles when applied as ice, boosting the immune system and male fertility, and much else besides. A miracle indeed.
The Sunday Telegraph, 26th November 2006