On Sat, 9 Apr 2005, Joshua Kronengold wrote: > Philip Hart writes: > >I meant "mercury" in the sense of "quicksilver", hence the lower-case "m", > >but ok, will ponder further. Maybe scalpel through the association with > >medicine. > > [changed the topic to represent the OT nature of this thread-segment] > The association of the cadescus and medicine is apocryphal. (Hermes has > no significant medical attributes) -- it was (basically, mistakenly) > used for a while in the US, but the actual snake-based Greek medical > symbol is the Aescalepus (and US medical organizations basically > changed over to that a few years ago) -- the single-snake staff. Hence my comment in the original thread about Asclepius... Note that for someone with such stickling for details, you're laissez-faire about spelling - you've now doubled the google-incidence of "cadescus". Alchemy, subway train, lockpick... Dunno.