medicine

plural medicines · alternative obsolete medicin

1. countableuncountableA 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.

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   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)!

   Synonyms: pharmaceutical

2. broadlycountableAny treatment or cure.

   A legislative remedy might be some harsh medicine; is that cure worse than the ill?

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   Surely every medicine is an innovation; and he that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils […]

   1625, Francis Bacon, Of Innovation

   Synonyms: regimen, course, program, prescription

3. uncountableThe 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. uncountableThe profession and practice of physicians, including surgeons.

   The history of medicine can be discretized into eras with differing relationships between physicians and surgeons

   1. countableoftenspecificallyuncountableScientific medicine.
   2. historicalmainlyuncountableThe profession and practice of nonsurgical physicians as sometimes distinguished from that of surgeons.

      the evolving relationship of medicine to surgery in the nineteenth century

5. uncountableRitual magic used, as by a medicine man, to promote a desired outcome in healing, hunting, or warfare; traditional medicine.
6. countableuncountableAmong 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.

   Well, I brought 'em luck all the time; they always said so. I was good medicine - until that last fight.

   1952, Dorothy M. Johnson, The Unbeliever; in Indian Country, London: Corgi, 1961, page 33

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   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.

   1896, F. H. Giddings, The Principles of Sociology

7. countableobsoleteuncountableBlack magic, superstition.
8. countableobsoleteuncountableA 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.

   1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, II. ii. 18

9. countableobsoleteuncountableA physician.

   I have seen a medicine / That's able to breathe life into a stone

   1598, William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, II. i. 72

10. countableslanguncountableRecreational drugs, especially alcoholic drinks.

present singular third person medicines · participle present medicining · participle past medicined · past medicined · alternative obsolete medicin

1. obsoleterareTo treat with medicine.

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   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.

   1857, Delia Bacon, The philosophy of the plays of Shakspere unfolded