The serpentine column which still stands in the old race course in Constantinople is certainly a relic of serpent worship, though this fact was not appreciated by Constantine when he set it up. The significance of the Ark is not to be overlooked. First, Noah was directed to take with him into the Ark animals of every kind. But this historical absurdity, read aright and in its true phallic sense, means that the Ark was the sacred Argha of Hindoo mythology, which like the moon in Zoroastrian teachings, carries in itself the germ of all things. Read in this sense the thing is no longer incomprehensible. As _En Arche_ (in the beginning) Elohim created the Heavens and the Earth, so in the Ark were the seeds of all things preserved that they might again repopulate the earth. Thus this Ark of Noah, or of Osiris, the primeval ship whose navigation has been ascribed to various mythological beings, was in fact the Moon or the Ship of the Sun, in which his seed is supposed to be hidden until it bursts forth in new life and power. But the dove which figures so conspicuously in the biblical legend was consecrated to Venus in all her different names, in Babylon, in Syria, in Palestine and in Greece; it even attended upon Janus in his Voyage of the Golden Fleece. And so the story of Jonah going to Joppa, a seaport where Dagon, the Fish-God was worshipped, and of the great fish, bears a suspicious relation to the same cult, for the fish was revered at Joppa as was the dove at Nineveh. It has been impossible to dissociate serpent and serpent worship from Aesculapius. This is not because this mythological divinity is supposed to have been the founder of my profession, but because he has been given at all times a serpentine form and has been, apparently, on the most familiar terms with the animal. Pausanias, indeed, assures us that he often appeared in serpentine form, and the Roman citizens of two thousand years ago saw in this god "in reptilian form an object of high regard and worship." When this divinity was invited to make Rome his home, in accordance with the oracle, he is represented as saying: "I come to leave my shrine; This serpent view, that with ambitious play My staff encircles; mark him every way; His form though larger, nobler, I'll assume, And, changed as God's should be, bring aid to Rome." (Ovid: Metamorphosis XV). When in due time this salutary serpent arrived upon the island in the Tiber he began to assume his natural form, whatever that may have been; "And now no more the drooping city mourns, Joy is again restored and health returns." Considering then the intimate relation between the founder of medicine and the serpent it will not seem strange to you that the serpent myth is a subject of keen interest to every student of the history of medicine.