A Closer Look at the Collection - Who was Asclepius?

Hi everybody, this is Dane with Slater Museum, and even though the museum is closed, I wanted to take this opportunity to show off some of our amazing and unique artifacts within the museum's collection. So come and join me and take a look at what makes this museum so special. I hope everybody is doing well as best as they can be in this very uncertain and difficult time, but I wanted to share with you some distance learning here. Since I am here at the museum, I'd like to take an opportunity to introduce to you one of our plaster casts. This right here, this is a plaster cast of the Greek god Asclepius. Asclepius is the Greek god of medicine. Very fitting for this particular time. And I wanted to share with you some information about Asclepius because there's one particular thing associated with him that I'm sure many of you, if not all of you, have seen once or twice. Now a little bit about Asclepius. He is the Greek god of medicine. He is the son of Apollo in Greek mythology, and he has five daughters. All five daughters contribute in some way, shape, or form to medicine or healing or hygiene. In fact, one of his daughter's names was Hygieia, from which the name hygiene comes from. But anyway, I wanted to share with you the main symbol associated with the Greek god Asclepius that I'm sure you all have seen once or twice. Let me bring up the image here on the iPad. Here we are. This is the rod of Asclepius. This is the symbol that's most commonly associated with the god Asclepius. You may have seen this image once or twice, or perhaps you may have seen an image that actually looks like this one. There's actually two images here that we're going to talk about very briefly. We have this image, and then there's this one, the caduceus. I'm sure you've seen the caduceus because this is the symbol most commonly associated with medicine. However, there's a bit of a discrepancy here because the caduceus, the symbol that you see right now, is actually the staff of Hermes, the Greek god Hermes, and it doesn't actually relate to medicine. However, it looks very similar to the rod of Asclepius. If you were to actually go on the American Medical Association's website, their logo features a snake intertwined around the staff that you can see right here. But in the early 1900s, around 1902, the U.S. Army Medical Corps ended up adopting this symbol, the caduceus, as their official symbol or logo. And over the years, it has contributed to some confusion between the two symbols. But whenever you see the single snake intertwined around the staff that you see, that is actually the rod of Asclepius. That is the symbol that is associated with this Greek god and medicine. I hope everybody does well and you all have a great day today.