Caduceus

[4] As a symbol, it represents Hermes (or the Roman Mercury), and by extension trades, occupations, or undertakings associated with the god.

[5] By extension of its association with Mercury and Hermes, the caduceus is also a symbol of commerce and negotiation, two realms in which exchange balanced by reciprocity is recognized as an ideal.

Although the Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and no wings, is the traditional and more widely used symbol of medicine, the caduceus is sometimes used by healthcare organizations.

[14] One Greek myth of origin of the caduceus is part of the story of Tiresias,[15] who found two snakes copulating and killed the female with his staff.

[16] In Rome, Livy refers to the caduceator who negotiated peace arrangements under the diplomatic protection of the caduceus he carried.

[19] In his study of the cult of Hermes, Lewis Richard Farnell (1909) assumed that the two snakes had simply developed out of ornaments of the shepherd's crook used by heralds as their staff.

[21] William Hayes Ward (1910) discovered that symbols similar to the classical caduceus sometimes appeared on Mesopotamian cylinder seals.

Frothingham incorporated Ward's research into his own work, published in 1916, in which he suggested that the prototype of Hermes was an "Oriental deity of Babylonian extraction" represented in his earliest form as a snake god.

From this perspective, the caduceus was originally representative of Hermes himself, in his early form as the Underworld god Ningishzida, "messenger" of the "Earth Mother".

[23] The caduceus is mentioned in passing by Walter Burkert[24] as "really the image of copulating snakes taken over from Ancient Near Eastern tradition".

The coat of arms of Kyiv National University of Trade and Economics of Ukraine has two crossed torches surmounted by a caduceus on the shield.

This usage was popularized by the adoption of the caduceus as its insignia by the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1902 at the insistence of a single officer (though there are conflicting claims as to whether this was Capt.

[35] From this latter point of view, would not his symbol be suitable for certain Congressmen, all medical quacks, book agents and purveyors of vacuum cleaners, rather than for the straight-thinking, straight-speaking therapeutist?

As conductor of the dead to their subterranean abode, his emblem would seem more appropriate on a hearse than on a physician's car.For use in documents prepared on computer, the symbol has code point in Unicode, at U+2624 ☤ CADUCEUS.