SOCIAL CLASS AND MENTAL ILLNESS

Thus, apart from the serpent, the staff became "the most apt emblem of the Greek god of healing because, with his rod, which shares the privilege of everlasting life, he cured the sick and thus, by antique standards, snatched the sick from death". It is easy to see, as Schouten explains, why the serpent and the staff, which were initially conceived of as separate entities in the effigies of Asklepios, ultimately became united into a single symbol a staff with a serpent encircling it. "For they were both chthonic symbols representing the same thing, i.e.; the life of the earth, a fact which received further emphasis by their union in one symbol."