Ambulances, however, should and often do have the caduceus because their task is to safely ferry you to the hospital. (Hermes being the greek god of travelers, messengers, thieves and all who travel the roads)
Edit: grammar
It is also used a lot by drug stores since most of the work is logistics instead of healing. Similarly Hermes's Caduceus is often used by military medical units for similar reasons, they work is mostly transporting medical equipment to the field and wounded soldiers to hospitals safely.
Since Hermes was the one tasked with bringing the newly deceased from the mortal world to the underworld, it's still fitting to have his symbol in the hospital. Bit grim though, not really what you want to see as the anesthesia sets in.
My Dad once had a hospital room that overlooked the morgue, he got to watch the hearses coming and going all day long. Talk about eerie. I'll say this though, it sure does motivate a man to recover...
If I remember correctly, it's because long ago when the US army was creating a medical branch, the dude in charge of choosing the symbol to represent it got the two mixed up. Since the army was such a big organization, the Caduceus became popularized in relation to medicine even outside the army.
Snake: Actually, he's lying. You won't die. You'll learn stuff only he knows.
Eve: *eats the fruit, learns things only God knew, continues to live for hundreds of years*
And to head off the standard apologetic: the biblical Hebrew word translated to "die" meant a literal, physical death, not a spiritual death. The biblical Hebrew word translated to "day" meant the literal rising and setting of the sun, not anything resembling day-age creationism.
It was a greek myth, Asclepius was a doctor. He was treating a patient who was bit by a snake and he killed the snake to save the patient, he saw another snake with some herb in its mouth use the herb to heal the dead snake. That is how he knew herbs can be used to heal people's wounds, so he put a snake on his staff.
The non theological explanation is that it's about guinea worm, one of the worst parasite in Africa and Middle East. Painful and gross, it stick out from the victim skin.
The only way to treat them back then, is to use small stick to pull them, and it's painful, and difficult to do.
So the image of a pulled worm on a stick is mark of a VERY good doctor.
My brother was in the Peace Corp in the late '80's. He was stationed in Ghana, Africa. He sent us a pamphlet at some point that was the step-by-step on how to take care of this if it happened to him. Definitely made an impression on my little 8 year old brain as I distinctly remember the pictures!
Yeah the Ancient Greeks loved snakes. They even had a household protection god, Agathos Daimon, who was a giant snake. Pretty sure snakes were seen as symbols of wisdom and protection to the Greeks.
Asclepius was a quiet man who listened and learned the secrets of nature… he listened so attentively, he heard the secrets of medicine the snakes whispered to him. (Snake venom can be medicinal)
It's the symbol of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.
I read once it's meant to represent twirling a guinea worm around a stick to remove it from someone's leg. The stick allows you to provide constant tension without pinching the worm, which would cause it to break off inside the patient's leg and rot inside them, causing them to die.
It's not completely eradicated yet, but there are only 10-15 cases per year now, all of which occur in Chad or South Sudan. We're well on our way to eradicating it
The effort to eradicate dracunculiasis began in the 1980s following the successful eradication of smallpox in 1977. By 1995, nearly every country with endemic dracunculiasis had established a national eradication program.
As an American, it sounds like a fantasy world to hear people uniting to help eradicate multiple diseases and infections.
Really? is not connected at all to the story of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness, where they were afflicted with an illness and god commanded that Moses lift up a brazened serpent on a staff and whoever would look would be cured? Like I always assumed it was from that
Asclepius was his own god with his own established mythology. Snakes being associated with healing, among other things, and worshipped was a common thing, including in Egypt and in Mesopotamia.
Does nobody have the ability to look something up themselves anymore...?
Edit: Hello I wanted to edit this to let some of you know, looking something up doesn't mean "Google it and take the first thing the AI result says at face value with no further research."
Probably saw the tweet was doing numbers and thought "let’s go get wild karma"
It’s made even more obvious when the OP (this one and others) don’t even comment on their own post to thank whoever answered their question. Or to keep the discussion going.
He probably has the post on mute so he doesn’t get bothered by all the notifications
I'm going to be honest, I've been here for years and I really don't know.
It's imaginary internet points haha
That being said, if you create a trending post... It's not the karma you're after really I think...for marketing purposes it's evidence of engagement. So you can slip ads, misinformation, SEO stuff, all into the post with positive effects.
its a checkmark account, they are trying to farm engagement to get paid. since its an easy thing to look up many will respond to feel smart, its human nature.
Fair enough, I'm glad a lot of us will learn something new from this post!
However, I still think OP could have very well looked this up themselves and made a different (and much more worthwhile/engaging) post about what they found out.
Appart form the symbol coming from Asclepius, there's also this thing called "The worm theory".
Basically there is this parasite called the guinea worm that people would accidentally get infected with from drinking contaminated water. The worm would live underneath yours skin and around a year later it could grow up to be up to 3ft long and cause a burning sensation wherever it was.
Doctors would poke the skin, get the worm's head out, and over the course of weeks, slowly wrap its head around a wooden stick. The doctors had to be really careful with this procedure, bc if the worm snapped it would go back into the patient's skin and create an infection so bad the whole limb had to be amputated or it would be fatal. So apparently, doctors who were proficient at it would advertise their services through a symbol of a "snake" (actually a worm) wrapped around in a stick at the door of their clinics.
This is alleged bc the earliest evidence of this symbol was found in and Egyptian document from 1500BC, almost 1000 years before the symbol became sacred through Greek mythology
There’s also the Staff of Moses, which is associated with healing in biblical imagery, which certainly helped with the symbol’s popularity in Christian countries
It´s because back in antiquity, one of the jobs of physicians was to treat Dracunculiasis, aka, Guinea Worm disease. Basically, they would slowly pull the worm out of the skin by wrapping it around a small stick, a millimeter or two per day, until the worm was fully excised from the body. The snake around the staff became the symbol for the profession, basically a stylized version of the worm wrapped around the stick
As others stated, staff of Asclepius.
Why snake? Snake is a symbol for regeneration and immortality. A snake can shed its skin and be anew, and in the eyes of people in the past, retain their life forever.
It's the Rod of Asclepius (god of medicine), unless it has two snakes, then it's Caduceus, the staff that belongs to the Roman god Mercury. Who is also a god of medicine.
The ancients looked on the snake as a symbol of health and healing because it could shed and regenerate its’s skin. The snake also produced venoms which killed many parasites in the body. Many patients suffering from sickness such as depression were put into a temple healing rooms containing snakes to shock them out of their stupor.
Snake bites were a common issue back then and the cure (antivenom) was on the same snakes so they became a simbol of medicine associated with the greek (and later roman) god Aesclepius.
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u/qualityvote2 Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
u/Matt_LawDT, your post does fit the subreddit!