You can read the Staff of Aesculapius to read spells. (Not specified if this should be possible to fail like a spellbook could, with the same or different effects, or if it depends on whether or not the Staff dislikes you as a non-healer.)

The Staff of Aesculapius should be made out of copper, since that is the antibacterial effective-against-disease material.

Invoking the Staff of Aesculapius allows you to select a direction. If you pick a direction with an adjacent monster, the monster will get the healing effect instead of you. If you aim at yourself or a direction with no monster, the healing effect applies to you as normal.

The Staff of Aesculapius doubles healing from all sources while wielded.

Attempting to move healers out of the petmastering role: they now have skilled medical knowledge that enables them to hit monsters in melee with a scalpel or knife to inflict a “bleeding” status effect which will cause the monster to lose HP continuously. Any role is able to do this with a scalpel, but the effect is much more limited than it is for Healers. This means that for a Healer, combat now consists of hitting a monster to make it bleed, then disengaging and keeping away from it in the hope that it dies on its own. The Staff of Aesculapius no longer drains, instead it heals the damage it would have dealt (unless the Cyclops has it, in which case it drains life like normal.)

Additionally, the Staff of Aesculapius no longer has level-draining powers. Instead it has a drain HP attack that heals the wielder.