This serpent was probably only a pestilential disease which he cured. […] This was a wand entwined with two serpents. […] Sometimes they were depicted under the form of serpents. […] At Epidaurus, he was worshipped under the form of a serpent, and sometimes under that of an old man, holding a staff encircled by a serpent. […] Her girdle was a serpent, and snakes hissed in her hair.