medicine

noun medicines · medicin

1. countable, uncountable A substance which specifically promotes healing when ingested or consumed in some way; a pharmaceutical drug. This medicine has fewer adverse effects than others in its drug class.

   Similar: pharmaceutical

2. broadly, countable Any treatment or cure. A legislative remedy might be some harsh medicine; is that cure worse than the ill?

   Similar: regimen, course, program, prescription

3. uncountable The study of the cause, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease or illness. She's studying medicine at university because she wants to be a doctor in the future.
4. uncountable The profession and practice of physicians, including surgeons. The history of medicine can be discretized into eras with differing relationships between physicians and surgeons
5. countable, often, specifically, uncountable Scientific medicine.
6. historical, mainly, uncountable The profession and practice of nonsurgical physicians as sometimes distinguished from that of surgeons. the evolving relationship of medicine to surgery in the nineteenth century
7. uncountable Ritual magic used, as by a medicine man, to promote a desired outcome in healing, hunting, or warfare; traditional medicine.
8. countable, uncountable Among the Native Americans, a spiritual power, or any object or person through whom such power is channeled, believed to grant influence over natural or magical forces, provide protection, or effect healing. The North American Indian boy usually took as his medicine the first animal of which he dreamed during the long and solitary fast that he observed at puberty.
9. countable, obsolete, uncountable Black magic, superstition.
10. countable, obsolete, uncountable A philter or love potion. If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged. It could not be else. I have drunk medicines.
11. countable, obsolete, uncountable A physician. I have seen a medicine / That's able to breathe life into a stone
12. countable, slang, uncountable Recreational drugs, especially alcoholic drinks.

Similar: health care, medicine

verb medicines · medicining · medicined · medicin

1. obsolete, rare To treat with medicine. And we shall find, under the head of the medicining of the body, some things on the subject of medicine in general, which could be better said there than here, because of the wrath of professional dignitaries,- the eye of the 'basilisk,' was not perhaps quite so terrible in that quarter then, as it