Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/88



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERPENT IN THE STATUES AND VOTIVE OFFERINGS EXPOSED TO VIEW IN THE AESCULAPIAN TEMPLES

Almost every important gallery of sculpture in Europe possesses at least one marble statue of Aesculapius, and in the majority of these the god is represented as a middle-aged or elderly man of powerful frame, having a full head of hair and full beard, and clothed only with the pallium or mantle, which is so placed as to leave the right shoulder and a large part of the chest uncovered. He holds in his right hand a knotted staff around which, in many of the statues, is coiled a serpent whose head approaches very closely to the hand. The expression of the god's countenance is strikingly peaceful and serene, yet without any evidence of weakness. In not a few instances other animals are represented alongside the statue, usually at the god's feet—as, for example, the cock, the owl, the eagle, the hawk or the ram—and occasionally his daughter Hygieia is shown at his side feeding the serpent. The cock is the symbol of watchfulness—a physician should be vigilant; the owl symbolizes his need of clearsightedness and of readiness to care for his patients in the night as well as during the day; the eagle has a penetrating eye and it is the emblem of long life—a benefit which the healing art is capable of procuring; the hawk was the bird consecrated to Isis, Queen of Egypt, who was believed by the Egyptians to have been highly skilled in medicine; and the ram is the symbol of dreams and divination. Pliny says that the patients who were brought to the temple of Aesculapius were made to lie down at night wrapped in the skin of a