Caduceus as a symbol of medicine emblem of the physician [...] it is most unfortunate that the 'confusion' exists." In an anonymous rebuttal contained in a letter to the editor published three months later in "The Military Surgeon" it was claimed that the late Col. John R. van Hoff was a member of the board that selected the emblem ("if he was not the one who was chiefly instrumental in its adoption"). In the letter to the editor reproduced by Emerson, the anonymous author claims According to this view the caduceus was not intended to be a medical symbol (and, though explained differently, this reflects the
CADUCEUS (expert system) CADUCEUS (expert system) CADUCEUS was a medical expert system finished in the mid-1980s (first begun in the 1970s- it took a long time to build the knowledge base) by Harry Pople (of the University of Pittsburgh), building on Pople's years of interviews with Dr. Jack Meyers, one of the top internal medicine diagnosticians and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Their motivation was an intent to improve on MYCIN - which focused on blood-borne infectious bacteria - to focus on more comprehensive issues than a narrow field like blood poisoning (though it would do it in a similar manner);