{"id":8936,"date":"2022-12-12T04:17:44","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T11:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=8936"},"modified":"2022-12-12T04:20:31","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T11:20:31","slug":"you-say-caduceus-i-say-asclepius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/12\/you-say-caduceus-i-say-asclepius\/","title":{"rendered":"You say caduceus, I say Asclepius"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wings and serpents reign in hospitals and clinics and even the U.S. Army. Tonight they soared and slithered atop an article about trans* medical care\u2014denial thereof\u2014in Florida, colors coordinated in white, pink, and Egyptian blue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Collage\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Thing is, Egyptians of old would have recognized these airborne and earthbound in the caduceus<\/em>, the wand wielded by the Greeks\u2019 Hermes (and the Nile’s appropriated Hermes Trismegistus), the messenger Mercury. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rod associated with medicine is not Mercury’s<\/a> but rather the staff of Asclepius<\/a>. Apollo bestowed these iconic objects on both deities, but only the latter is associated with medicine. And so: the next EMT you see is emblazoned properly; the next newscast, not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ambulance<\/a>
Image: Tony Hisgett, CC BY 2.0 https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Header image:<\/em>
Flag of the<\/em>
Surgeon General<\/em>
of the U.S. Army<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disambiguation of the symbol of serpent and staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[975,75],"tags":[1355,1356,1357],"class_list":["post-8936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-medicine","tag-asclepius","tag-hermes","tag-mercury"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/2499px-Flag_of_the_Surgeon_General_of_the_United_States_Army_with_fringe.svg_.png?fit=2499%2C2048&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paF2cn-2k8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}