Made from an offshoot of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, the wood takes various forms across the millennia, becoming an object of reverence, desire and fear for various crowned heads until the early seventh century, when a Christian emperor humbly carries it to its sanctuary in Jerusalem.
The conversation between Couri and the patient is out of the Bizarro World Garden of Eden: Eve walks in with full knowledge of good and evil, and the snake tries to disabuse her of it with doubletalk.