Dr. Alexandre Campos Moraes Amato
Resident Physician at Hospital Jaraguá, SP
Asclepius, in Greek mythology, or Aesculapius, in Roman mythology, is the principal god of Medicine. The story goes that the beautiful Coronis, a mortal, gave herself to the sun-god Apollo and became pregnant. But she married Ischys, to whom she had been promised. Apollo killed Ischys, and his sister, Artemis, killed Coronis. Before Coronis’s body was cremated, Apollo snatched Asclepius away and entrusted him to the care of Chiron. Chiron was responsible for the boy’s education and upbringing, and Asclepius learned all the secrets of the healing art with medicinal plants. When he grew up, Asclepius became so skilled that he was able to raise the dead. Concerned about the depopulation of the “beyond” and the natural order of things, Zeus, the chief god of Olympus, killed Asclepius with a thunderbolt, but in recognition of him he took him up to the heavens and made him a divinity. His wife, Epione, soothed pain; his daughter Hygieia symbolized the prevention of disease; another daughter, Panacea, symbolized the treatment of disease; his only son, Telesphorus, symbolized convalescence. Whenever a plague or epidemic struck a region, physicians would go out to kill the snakes, for they believed that these demonic creatures were the cause of disease. With the snake coiled around his staff, Asclepius holds dominion over disease, curing his patients. Over time, the serpent on Asclepius’s staff became the symbol of Medicine, while the cup and the serpent of Hygieia came to symbolize Pharmacy. According to some authors, the great Hippocrates is the nineteenth descendant of Asclepius and the twentieth counting from Zeus. Hippocrates’s grandfather, also a physician, was named Hippocrates, but he never attained the fame of the one who became known as the “father of medicine.”
