There is a blogger named “Orac” who writes a blog called “Respectful Insolence”. Orac is an aggressively abusive person. The language and emotions expressed by Orac towards his victims verges on hate.
The subject of this blog entry is a entry on Orac’s blog refuting claims by a man named Mike Adams about the meaning of a symbol called a “Caduceus”. If abusive language and attitudes of the type previously described distress you, please do not go to Orac’s blog at the link below.
Orac Blog entry attacking Mike Adams claims about origin of Caduceus
The Caduceus is a symbol commonly associated with western medicine. A Caduceus looks like a staff with two snakes wrapped around it as demonstrated in this picture.
Orac’s blog entry talks about a man named Mike Adams who is a proponent of alternative medicine. Mr Adams made various statements about the Caduceus in order to further his claim that western medicine is bad. The claims of Mr Adams about Western medicine were quite negative. They can be read in full at the link above.
Orac’s blog entry is dedicated to describing how the statements of Mike Adams about the Caduceus are wrong.
I agree with Orac that the statements of Mike Adams about the Caduceus do not seem believable.
I also feel that Orac’s statements about the Caduceus are equally unbelievable.
Orac’s explanation for the adoption of the Caduceus by western medicine involves various historical stories sourced from Wikipedia. I feel that any historical reason involving the actions of various people is suspect. There is no way to verify if the people existed or did what was described, or even if the material in Wikipedia has been accurately recorded.
According to Happeh Theory, the Caduceus is the symbol of Western medicine because the Caduceus represents a human body. The staff represents the spine of a human being, and the two snakes represent the two snakes within the human body.
According to Happeh Theory, the human body behaves as if there are two large snakes in it located as shown in this picture. The tail of each snake is at the foot and the head of each snake is at the head.
The author of this blog is not a computer graphics expert. An attempt was made to show how the two snakes within the body wrap around the legs, the spine, and the head in the next picture.
Those are coil springs superimposed on the skeleton, because it was not possible to make a snake like body that conveyed the same information about how the coils wrap around the legs, the spine, and the head.
Another explanation for the caduceus that may be more appealing to scientists is The DNA View of the Human Body. According to The DNA View of the Human Body the human body can be treated as if it is a large DNA molecule as shown in the next picture.
A DNA molecule and a snake are both basically spirals, so really they are both saying the same thing. There are two spiral objects, snakes or DNA molecule spirals, that spiral up from the feet to the top of the head of a human being. The DNA View of the Human Body picture even looks sort of like the caduceus. Something vertically long and solid encased within two opposing spirals.
While Mr Orac may have a good heart, something that can be argued based on his abusiveness towards others, he does not know the things he thinks he does. His claim about the caduceus being adopted by western medicine may make good reading in a history book, but it is not reality.
Until Mr Orac learns more about the reality of the human body, I feel he should be less abusive to other people, and he should be less forceful in his statements about how right he is.
Mr Orac is a young man who still has much to learn about how the human body really works. Mr Orac has to throw out all of the trash western medicine put into his head, ( Mr Orac is a practicing physician ), and Mr Orac needs to listen to and try to comprehend people who can instruct him on how the human body actually works.
