medicine
Meaning of medicine: A field and a bottle share one word, and the branches of the field are themselves called medicine, as in internal or nuclear medicine.
Definition of medicine
Medicine is the field concerned with preventing, diagnosing and treating disease and with relieving symptoms and maintaining health, together with the science and training that support it. The same word also names a single substance taken for that purpose, in which case drug and medication mean much the same thing. Context makes clear which sense is meant.
What are the branches of medicine?
| Branch | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Internal medicine | Adult disease managed without surgery, with subspecialties by organ system |
| Family medicine | Continuing general care for people of all ages |
| Pediatrics | Disease in infants, children and adolescents |
| Psychiatry | Mental illness, including its medical treatment |
| Pathology and radiology | Diagnosis from tissue, fluids and images rather than at the bedside |
| Emergency medicine | Undifferentiated acute problems, sorted and stabilized |
Surgery is often set against medicine rather than counted inside it, which is why hospitals speak of medical and surgical patients as two groups. That usage narrows the word to treatment by means other than an operation.
How does the word combine?
Attached to a qualifier it names a whole approach. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive tracers to image function rather than structure, and the nuclear medicine scan is its main tool. Evidence-based medicine describes practice built on systematically appraised research rather than on custom. Precision medicine matches treatment to the molecular features of an individual illness. Occupational, sports, travel and forensic medicine each mark out a setting rather than an organ. Alternative medicine covers practices used in place of conventional treatment, while complementary approaches are used alongside it; the word medicine in those phrases carries no implication that a practice has been tested.
Medicine, drug or medication?
In ordinary speech a medicine is something taken to get better. Medication is the same thing in more formal use and also names the act of giving it. Drug is broader and carries a second sense of a substance used for its effect on mood, which is why labels and regulators prefer medicine or medicinal product for something prescribed. Pharmacology is the study of how any of them act on the body and how the body acts on them, and it draws no distinction between the words at all, since the chemistry is the same whatever the substance is called.
Used in a sentence
The patient was instructed to continue the current medicine until the follow-up appointment.
Good to know
The word medicine can refer either to the overall practice of healthcare or to a specific drug, and the intended meaning usually depends on whether it appears alongside a field of practice or a particular substance being taken.
Word origin
Where “medicine” comes from
From Latin medicina, meaning the art of healing, derived from medicus, meaning physician, and ultimately from mederi, meaning to heal.