Asklepios was called to heal the sick son of Minos, ruler of Crete. As Asklepios was unable to help the child, Minos locked him in a room with the boy. A snake slithered under the door, and Askelpios killed it. The dead snake was restored to life. Hades felt that his realm was being depopulated as Asklepios was saving too many lives. Zeus thereupon struck Asklepios dead with a thunderbolt. As the legend of the demi-god grew, Asklepian temples were built throughout the ancient world.
The temples became major health centers. All statues of Asklepios depict him as a kindly looking bearded man leaning on a rough-hewn staff entwined by a single serpent. The temples were extremely popular and Asklepios was worshiped by every echelon of society in the Greco-Roman world.
At the time of the great plague Sophicles pushed to establish an Asklepian temple in Athens. He was saved by an Asklepian physician and in gratitude dedicated his spear and breastplate to Asclepios. Galen, the best known physician of the Roman era CE considered himself a follower of Asklepios. Asklepian popularity peaked in the 3 rd century AD with over temples scattered throughout the ancient world from Scotland in the north to Egypt in the south and from Spain in the west to Persia Iran in the east.
After Constantine the Great made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4 th century AD, paganism and the cult of Asclepios gradually declined.
The final blow was an earthquake that destroyed the center at Cos, Hippocrates birthplace, in CE. Subsequently, many of the Asklepian temples were converted into Christian centers.
Hygieia or Roman Salus , his daughter, survived the fall of paganism into the Christian era and became synonymous with the concept of health and well-being. Hippocrates transcended his beginnings as an Asklepian priest and he and his followers observed and recorded descriptions of disease that survive to this day. They removed the concept of illness from superstition and based it upon natural causes.
The Hippocratic Oath still given at many medical school graduation ceremonies today begins:. I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asklepios, and Hygea and Panacea, and all the gods and goddesses…. As you can see there is a long history and tradition of the use of the Staff of Asklepios to represent physicians—pushing years.
Now, another important figure in the ancient world was Hermes Mercury — one of the twelve Olympian gods. He was quite a precocious child. By noon on the day of his birth he was playing a lyre he had fashioned out of a tortoise shell. Later in the day he became hungry and stole fifty cattle from his half-brother, Apollo, to cook for an afternoon snack. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes his mother Maia relates:.
Among the immortal gods you will be ever known as the Prince of Thieves. You will wander under the earth where you will be the leader of the tiny ones the dead. Like Apollo, Hermes had many jobs. In the Odyssey he escorted the slain suitors of Penelope to the underworld, the realm of the god Hades Pluto.
Hermes was also the God of Commerce and Trade. Why A Snake? Which of These? When Did We Get it Wrong? Conclusion The use of the symbol is very ironical as how can destructive creatures used to represent a healing purpose. References 1. Medicine's logo. Can Med Assoc J. Coston TO. The proper symbol of medicine. Trans Am Ophthalmol Soc. Larose C. The caduceus v. Jones KB. The staff of asclepius: A new perspective on the symbol of medicine.
Wis Med J. Holy Bible. Numbers Old Testament. King James Translation [ Google Scholar ]. The snake that's wrapped around the rod may symbolize rejuvenation, because snakes shed their skin, or it could simply represent the healing of snakebites. It might also have something to do with antivenom or the medicinal properties of snake venoms. The rod itself has more to do with medicine than the fact that a doctor-god carried it, though the explanations for the connection vary.
It could be a reference to a traditional treatment of a parasitic nematode called Dracunculus medinensis or Guinea worm. The worm causes blisters on whatever limb it takes up residence in, which can be can be quite painful judging from the ancient Latin name for the infection: "affliction with little dragons. Hermes was also the patron of travelers, which makes his connection to medicine appropriate because, in the olden days, doctors had to travel great distances by foot in order to visit their patients.
In one version of Hermes' myth, he is given the staff by Apollo, the god of healing. In another version, he receives the staff from Zeus, the king of the gods, and it is entwined with two white ribbons.
The ribbons were later replaced by serpents, as one story tells that Hermes used the stick to separate two fighting snakes , who then coiled around his staff and remained there in balanced harmony. Another, earlier depiction of the medical symbol is the staff of Asclepius, thought it has no wings and only one snake.
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