The medicinal staff dates back much farther than Moses. It was originally a Greek symbol stolen by the Christians (as were the majority of Christian symbols) and it DID mean specifically "to heal".

Take a history class.

some guy ate a cyst or something similar from raw cows flesh and grew a tape worm (or some other sort of worm)... i think he had some mental problems, but it was actually, while disgusting, fairly interesting...

there was one part where the worm crawled about an inch or two out of a cut on his arm...

and I've lost my appetite just thinking about it again.

Animals are not the only ones who succumb to parasitic mind control:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060803_tgondii_culture.html

About half the human population (3 billion people) are infected with T. gondii.

The parasite is thought to have different, and often opposite effects in men versus women, but both genders appear to develop a form of neuroticism called "guilt proneness."

And I thought that affliction was due to me being raised as a Catholic.

Before, the topics ranged from parthenogenisis (asexual reproduction) to chimerism (people who have varying DNA through out their body i.e. their top organs do not match their bottom organs). Now he gave us an article about the Guinea Worm Disease.

Obviously, curiosity got the best of me and here we are...with belly aches.

Myth, Myth! From ancient Greek myth! Sorry this is a big pet peeve of mine. The stories themselves are myths. Mythology is the corpus of writing that analyzes myths. It's somewhat similar to the difference between History and Historiography. You wouldn't say you are a military historiography buff, when what you enjoy reading is John Keegan and Stephan Ambrose.

Now i feel sick because i have been to France eaten the snail, after i read this site, i vowed myself, i never will eat the snail ever again...Thanks a lot!!

Will i be brave to read more about it?? NOT !!

I guess if you were really unlucky, you could get a screwworm, filarial worms and Guinea worms, whilst the "crabs" you suffer from thanks to that trip to the shop with no windows last year all get a sacculina carcini. Goodness only knows what they would do to your genitals!