Tag: snake
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The snake, the staff, and the healer
Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Introduction In some ancient cultures, especially around the Near East, the snake was involved in healing. Today this seems counterintuitive. There are as many as 130,000 deaths from snake bites worldwide each year and three times that number of amputations and severe disabilities. Ophidiophobia is one of the more common phobias,…
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A painful but tender embrace: Robert Pope’s Aesculapius
Caroline WellberyWashington, DC, United States Robert Pope, early in childhood a student gifted in science, chose art as his career, and no one better melds the observing eye with the understanding heart. The shadow of cancer hung over him during the most productive years of his life: he died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age…