Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/91

 ram, in order that they might have divine dreams. The presence of the serpent in nearly all of the statues of Aesculapius is explained in a variety of ways. Some say that this reptile, which sheds his skin once a year, is emblematic of the sick person's need to acquire a new body, or at least cast off his old skin in the same manner as does the snake. Others consider the serpent as merely the symbol of wisdom, as it is admittedly the shrewdest and most cunning of all animals. In a few instances it is represented as drinking from a receptacle held in the hand of Hygieia. Perhaps the sculptor's intention here was to show that the serpent, although the wisest of all animals, believed that he might add to his stock of wisdom by drinking from the fountain under the control of Aesculapius, thus conveying the impression that the wisdom of the latter was greater than his own. But all these interpretations are too subtle for the uneducated mind to appreciate at a glance. They fail also to satisfy our preconceived ideas of what such a statue should be—viz., a memorial of the godlike character of Aesculapius and of the priceless benefits which he conferred upon his fellow men, and, at the same time, an object which, when first contemplated by one who is ill, would at once evoke in that person feelings of perfect confidence in the ability and the willingness of the god represented by the statue to effect a cure. Some, perhaps even a majority, of the statues thus far recovered from the ruins of the different Aesculapian temples certainly fail to arouse any such sentiments in the minds of ordinary observers; but there are others which do in some measure accomplish this, and among the number the statue which may be seen in the Berlin Museum and of which a photographic copy (Fig. 4) is here reproduced, should certainly be included. The head of the god is less imposing and the expression less kindly than are these features in some of the other statues (see, for example, Fig. 5), but, to offset this, the serpent represented in the latter is of the non-poisonous variety. The addition of such a harmless creature to the figure representing the god contributes