Ancient Medicine

For the art of Medicine would not have been invented at first, nor would it have been made a subject of investigation (for there would have been no need of it), if when men are indisposed, the same food and other articles of regimen which they eat and drink when in good health were proper for them, and if no others were preferable to these. But now necessity itself made medicine to be sought out and discovered by men, since the same things when administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in good health, neither did nor do agree with them. But to go still further back, I hold that the diet and food which people in health now use would not have been discovered, provided it had suited with man to eat and drink in like manner as the ox, the horse, and all other animals, except man, do of the productions of the earth, such as fruits, weeds, and grass; for from such things these animals grow, live free of disease, and require no other kind of food. And, at first, I am of opinion that man used the same sort of food, and that the present articles of diet had been discovered and invented only after a long lapse of time, for when they suffered much and severely from strong and brutish diet, swallowing things which were raw, unmixed, and possessing great strength, they became exposed to strong pains and diseases, and to early deaths.
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The Origins of the Medical Caduceus

Snakes are familiar symbols of healing because of their presence on the medical caduceus, the symbol of the herald’s wand used by Hermes.
The medical caduceus originated during WWII, when medics used it as a symbol for a truce. Its association with medicine goes back even further, to ancient Greece, where the snake entwined upon a walking staff was one of the accoutrements of the healer-god Asclepius.
The Asclepian staff has often been confused with the caduceus. Both were probably symbols of truce in wartime, but the Asclepian staff entwined by only one snake is regarded by Classicists as the true symbol of the medical profession.
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