2-sided National Doctors’ Day Garden Flag

This year above all, doctors merit our gratitude and appreciation for dealing with the pandemic. Show your appreciation for the physicians that keep us healthy with preventative care and treat us when we are ill by posting a garden flag on National Doctors’ Day! First celebrated in 1933, a day set aside to honor doctors was the idea of Eudora Brown Almond herself a physician’s wife. March 30th was chosen as the date to be observed annually in the United States as it was the anniversary of the first use of general anesthesia in surgery on that date in 1842. Informally celebrated for its first 55 years or so, National Doctors’ Day became an officially recognized observance in 1990. + Our house flag bears the Rod of Asclepius on a hospital scrubs green background. Not to be confused with the caduceus, the Rod of Asclepius is a simple stick entwined with a snake. + No one knows when or why exactly the snake and stick were originally paired, but scholars theorize. According to ancient Greek mythology, Asclepius was the son of Apollo, the first physician, and the god of medicine. Stories connecting Asclepius and snakes are too numerous to recount in this small space. Suffice it to say Aesculapian snakes, a special non-poisonous variety, were introduced in each temple dedicated to the god as part of the foundation ritual. Thereafter, they roamed freely even in the ‘dormitories’ where the sick and injured slept. Because they shed their skins, snakes were associated with death and rebirth and, by extension, illness and recovery. The stick may simply represent an itinerant physician’s walking stick. Another interesting explanation for the symbol has been posited though: There is a variety of skin-burrowing worm that was removed from painful surface blisters in antiquity by gradually twining it around a stick. Except for the stick being replaced by gauze, the modern treatment for Guinea worm infestation remains the same. Regardless, the Rod of Asclepius has endured as the emblem of medical professionals to the present day. + Also available as a house flag + BTW... St. Luke the Evangelist is the principal patron saint of doctors and surgeons. See also our St. Luke house and garden flags. + Image Credit (Rod of Asclepius): WikiMedia Commons, CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.