The Testament of Solomon, a Greek text dated between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, has Solomon receive a seal-ring from the Archangel Michael and interrogate demons one by one. Each confesses its name, its mischief, and its counter-formula. The thirty-six decan-demons map illnesses onto the thirty-six ten-degree divisions of the zodiac: the first decan causes headaches and is defeated by invoking the archangel Michael; the seventh causes throat ailments, and so on through the body and the sky.
The legend's career: Solomon's ring, brass for evil spirits, iron for good, appears in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic lore, from Josephus's exorcism account to the Arabian Nights' bottle sealed with the ring of Solomon. One artifact, three civilizations, always the same function: the seal that makes spirits sign contracts.
The theoretical claim: naming a disease as an adversary with a personality is a coping technology. It externalizes the illness, gives the patient an enemy rather than a flaw, and makes cure a story with an ending. Modern narrative medicine and the ritual placebo literature converge on something the Testament assumed: the story is part of the treatment.
Modern medicine names diseases for dead doctors and Greek roots. Solomon's medicine named them for the beings causing them. Which taxonomy gives a patient more to fight?