# medicine
## English
### Alternative forms

* medicin (obsolete)

### Etymology

From Middle English medicin, from Middle French medicine, from Old French medecine, from Latin medicīna (“the healing art, medicine, a physician's shop, a remedy, medicine”), feminine of medicīnus (“of or belonging to physic or surgery, or to a physician or surgeon”), from medicus (“a physician, surgeon”). The extended sense of "Indigenous magic" is a calque of Ojibwe mashkiki (“medicine”) or mide (or cognates in related languages) when used in compounds such as Grand Medicine Society, medicine lodge, medicine dance, medicine bag, medicine wheel, medicine man, Medicine Line, and bad medicine or place names such as Medicine Hat, Medicine Creek, etc.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) enPR: ˈmed-sǐn, ˈmed-sn, IPA: /ˈmɛd.ɪ.s(ɪ)n/, /ˈmɛd.s(ɪ)n/
* Audio (Received Pronunciation):(file)
* (General American) enPR: medʹĭ-sĭn, IPA: /ˈmɛd.ɪ.sɪn/
* Audio (General American):(file)
* (weak vowel merger) IPA: /ˈmɛdəs(ə)n/
* Hyphenation: me‧di‧cine
* Rhymes: -ɛdɪsɪn, (weak vowel merger) -ɛdəsən

### Noun

medicine (countable and uncountable, plural medicines)
* (uncountable, countable) A substance which specifically promotes healing when ingested or consumed in some way; a pharmaceutical drug.
    Synonym: medication
    Hypernym: drug
    This medicine has fewer adverse effects than others in its drug class.
    Using a weekly pill organizer is a good way to help remind yourself to take your medicine each day, and it also tells you whether you already took today's pills (it's not unusual to forget doing a habitual task)!
* (loosely, countable) Any treatment or cure.
    A legislative remedy might be some harsh medicine; is that cure worse than the ill?
** 1625, Francis Bacon, Of Innovation:Surely every medicine is an innovation; and he that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils […]
* (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.
* (uncountable) The profession and practice of physicians, including surgeons.
    Hypernyms: health care, healthcare
    Hyponym: surgery
    The history of medicine can be discretized into eras with differing relationships between physicians and surgeons
** (mainly historical, uncountable) The profession and practice of nonsurgical physicians as sometimes distinguished from that of surgeons.
    Coordinate term: surgery
    the evolving relationship of medicine to surgery in the nineteenth century
* (uncountable) Ritual magic used, as by a medicine man, to promote a desired outcome in healing, hunting, or warfare; traditional medicine.
* Among the Native Americans, any object supposed to give control over natural or magical forces, to act as a protective charm, or to cause healing.
** 1896, F. H. Giddings, The Principles of Sociology: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.
* (obsolete) Black magic, superstition.
* (obsolete) A philter or love potion.
** 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, II. ii. 18: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.
* (obsolete) A physician.
** 1598, William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, II. i. 72:I have seen a medicine / That's able to breathe life into a stone
* (slang) Recreational drugs, especially alcoholic drinks.

#### Synonyms

* (substance): drug, prescription, pharmaceutical, elixir
* (treatment): regimen, course, program, prescription
* (practice): health care
* See also Thesaurus:medicine
* See also Thesaurus:pharmaceutical

#### Hyponyms

* academic medicine (which entails clinical medicine, medical education, biomedical basic science, and biomedical applied science)
* clinical medicine (comprising all point of care activity)
* laboratory medicine (which entails many lab tests, such as most serology and most NAATs (e.g., most PCRs))
* By epistemologic categorization:
** scientific medicine
*** evidence-based medicine
** integrative medicine
*** alternative medicine
*** complementary medicine
*** traditional medicine
**** indigenous medicine
**** Ayurvedic medicine
**** traditional Chinese medicine
**** folk medicine

#### Meronyms

* oncology

#### Derived terms

* aeromedicine
* allopathic medicine
* antimedicine
* a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
* a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down
* auriculomedicine
* biomedicine
* bush medicine
* Chinese medicine
* Chinese patent medicine
* Chinese traditional medicine
* chronomedicine
* cough medicine
* cryomedicine
* cybermedicine
* Darwinian medicine
* defensive medicine
* digital medicine
* dose of one's own medicine
* eclectic medicine
* Edison's medicine
* electromedicine
* emergency medicine
* energy medicine
* ethnomedicine
* family medicine
* folk-medicine
* forced medicine
* forensic medicine
* generative medicine
* geomedicine
* God's medicine
* hallway medicine
* herbal medicine
* heroic medicine
* iatromedicine
* internal medicine
* keraunomedicine
* laughter is the best medicine
* maintenance medicine
* medicine ball
* medicine cabinet
* medicine chest
* medicine dance
* Medicine Hat
* medicinelike
* Medicine Line
* Medicine Lodge
* medicine man
* mediciner
* medicine shield
* medicine show
* medicine woman
* mediciney
* molecular medicine
* nanomedicine
* neuromedicine
* nuclear medicine
* orphan medicine
* osteopathic medicine
* paramedicine
* patent medicine
* personalized medicine
* photomedicine
* phytomedicine
* precision medicine
* premedicine
* preventative medicine
* preventive medicine
* pseudo-medicine
* pseudomedicine
* psychomedicine
* recreational medicine
* regenerative medicine
* reproductive medicine
* socialized medicine
* space medicine
* sports medicine
* take one's medicine
* taste of one's own medicine
* technomedicine
* telemedicine
* unclear medicine
* veterinary medicine
* xenomedicine
* Yellow Medicine County

#### Related terms

* medic
* medical
* medicament
* medicate
* medication
* medicinal
* postmedication
* premedication

#### Translations
### Verb

medicine (third-person singular simple present medicines, present participle medicining, simple past and past participle medicined)
* (rare, obsolete) To treat with medicine.
** 1857, Delia Bacon, The philosophy of the plays of Shakspere unfolded: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 was in some others.

### See also

* therapy
* panacea

### References

* Prescription Desk Reference, Prescription Drug Information:
* “medicine”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
* "medicine" in the Merriam-Webster On-line dictionary
* "medicine" in the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia, Helicon Publishing LTD 2007.
* William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “medicine”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
* “medicine”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

## Italian
### Noun

medicine f
* plural of medicina

### Anagrams

* endemici

## Middle French
### Etymology

From Old French medecine, with the i added back to reflect the original Latin medicīna.

### Noun

medicine f (plural medicines)
* medicine (act of practising medical treatment)

#### Descendants

* French: médecine

## Spanish
### Verb

medicine
* inflection of medicinar:
** first/third-person singular present subjunctive
** third-person singular imperative