Tiber Island, Italy

Mythical Origin:

Locals repeat a story that in the year 510 BC, angry Romans overthrew a tyrannical ruler named Tarquinius Superbus and tossed his corpse into the Tiber River. His body was allegedly so heavy with the gold he had extorted from the population, that his corpse settled to the river bottom where silt accumulated over the years until it eventually formed Tiber Island.

Myth of the island of healing:

The legends go on to say that in 293 BC, there was a great plague in Rome. The Roman Senate (mostly male representative leaders at the time), after exhausting their extremely limited epidemiology playbook, consulted with the nearest Sibyl (one of a group of highly respected female oracles and prophets) for instructions how to deal with the plague. Roman and Greek influences were tightly knit together at the time, and no Greek would ever disregard the advice of a Sybil, her words guaranteed to come straight from the powerful gods. In fact many Greek tragedies hinged upon a hero disobeying a prophetess or failing to wait to receive her message.
The Sybil instructed the Roman Senate to build a temple to Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. The first step was to send a ship to purchase a statue of the deity from the city of Epidauros. This they did, surprised to find that the priestesses tossed in for free a serpent, symbol of medicine. The story goes that the serpent hugged the mast of the ship after the devine statue had been loaded and climbed to the highest lookout point. The crew sailed whatever direction the tongue of the snake flickered toward. It lead them to sail back up the Tiber River. When they approached Tiber Island, the story goes, the holy snake dove from the mast into the water and swam to the oddly boat-shaped island. The seamen took this as a sure sign that the Greek god Aesculapius wanted his temple to be built there.

The Facts:

Today Tiber Island is boat-shaped, 900 feet long and over 200 feet wide. Two bridges have connected it to both sides of the river since time immemorial. In the 1^st century AD, the entire island was remodeled. Travertine was added to the banks to appear as a ship's prow and stern. A tall obelisk was erected in the center of the island where a vessel's mast would be. And of course the symbol of medicine, Aesculapius' rod of rulership entwined with a snake, was built as a bas-relief on the front.

Facts of the island of healing:

There was a very practical wisdom to placing the Temple of Aesculapius on this island in 293 BC. Those suspected of carrying any plague could easily be separated from the more packed city and allowed to recuperate or die without infecting others off the island. The rituals of the clergy there largely protected them from infection by their ill charges.
Before the temple was built to purposefully tend to the sick, anthropological evidence suggests that the worst criminals from Rome and the ill and contagious were routinely marooned on the island to protect the remainder of the city's inhabitants.
Incidentally, temples to Jupiter and Gaia, and a grove sacred to Faunus were consecrated on the island in the 2^nd century BC.
Bearing the ancient temple of Aesculapius and later several modern hospitals, the island has been associated with medicine and healing ever since.