When I heard about President Jimmy Carter’s passing
after a century of existence, I recalled a trip to Egypt I took 25 years ago as
a public health professional. After the second day of discussions with primary
care physicians, President Carter’s work in eradicating a water-borne parasitic
worm disease came up.
“When I was a young doctor, I extracted a lot of
Guinea worms creeping out from the legs and arms of tribal residents. President
Carter helped us and the world stop the cycle of the parasites in our drinking
water. But recently I have seen these worms in Sudan, where I worked for a
while” an older physician told me.
“I have never seen one in my travels to Africa, the
Middle East or Asia” I said.
“And that is a good thing. You know, it was like
Asclepius’s Rod – we used to slowly coil the worm around a wooden stick. Just
like spaghetti around a Chinese chop stick!” he recalled with a wink.
… So, this morning, in a rather peculiar way, I made
a connection between my photography and my health care profession.
But first, a word about Asclepsius’s Rod (or Rod of Asclepsius) and the
modern Caduceus of medicine.
Here is a depiction of the origin of Asclepius’s Rod
(or staff) as seen in the statue of Asclepius at the Archeological Museum of
Epidaurus in Peloponnese (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Asclepius)
And the caduceus as the modern symbol of medicine:
The visual difference between the two is
obvious: two serpents vs one, and a winged vs non winged staff. However, the
history (or mythology) behind each is significantly different. Indeed, the
Asclepius’s Rod is said to represent a non-venomous rat snake, later called
Asclepian Snake, which was believed to freely wander around where Asclepius’s patients
slept. The caduceus, however, was the symbol of the Greek messenger of the gods
Hermes and a guide to the underworld.
Here
is a statue of Hermes carrying the caduceus, kept at the Vatican Museums, in
Rome. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes)
In Roman mythology, the Greek Hermes continued
to exist as Mercury. In neither mythology, Hermes was associated with medicine
or healing but he did carry what became the modern symbol of medicine, the caduceus,
especially in the United States. It is however often said that the real symbol
of medicine is the Asclepius’s Rod, and that the adoption of Hermes’s staff was
a misunderstanding of Greco-Roman mythology, although Hermes also represented alchemy, which was associated with pharmacy in Medieval times.
Further, many believe that Asclepius’s Rod does
not have a snake around it but a Guinea worm, or Dracunculus medinensis, a
nematode responsible for dracunculiasis (Guinea Worm Disease). And as the
Egyptian physician told me, these worms were historically extracted by the
healer wrapping them around a rod upon exit from a patient’s skin. (The counter
argument may be that the statue at the Archeological Museum of Epidaurus
clearly shows a snake. But mythology relies more on symbolism than facts, and the snake was historically believed to represent healing and regenerative power due the shedding of its skin).
Ok, this long introduction brings me to some of
my photos and perhaps gives a context that I had not considered before.
A. Photo
atop this essay page of my dogs playing. I took this one a few days ago, on Christmas day. The posture of the dogs reminded me of the two snakes coiling on the caduceus.
B. Street actors in a Shakespeare play. I
took this one in Baltimore Maryland.
C. Couple
on the boardwalk, Baltimore, Maryland. A tender moment captured as I was walking with my camera as
companion..
D. Photo
of a couple in embrace in swimming pool. This one was a challenge as I took it from the balcony of my
hotel room in Mont-Tremblant, Québec, Canada. I had a Mamiya Pro 645 medium
camera with me, and taking a photo with a waist finder by pointing the lens
downward was tricky. It takes a minute to see the woman on the right and the
man to the left of this composition, but realizing that I was looking down and
seeing the shadow of the men’s right leg in the shadow in the pool water helps…
The photo made the cover of my fifth book of poetry and travel stories.
E. Photo
of a couple on the beach, in Nazaré, Portugal. This one may qualify as the “pre-embrace” and made the cover of
my 7th book, this one in French, published in Canada.
Interestingly, the global Guinea Worm Disease eradication
work of the late President Jimmy Carter made me think of the snakes (guinea
worm?) wrapping around Asclepius’s Rod and Hermes’s Caduceus. And both as a
healthcare professional and a photographer, I saw a continuum between medicine
and the arts, somehow going back to the historical healers who were
philosophers, artists, poets and founders of today’s medicine.
As for my photos, are they reflections of my Défaut professionnel or the result of keen
timing by a street photographer? I will never know, but writing this essay sure felt like a self psychoanalysis!
January 5, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025
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