medicines

Noun

medicine (countable and uncountable, plural medicines)

1. 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.

   Synonyms:

   pharmaceutical

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

   Synonyms:

   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
   1. (often, specifically) Scientific medicine.
   2. (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

See all 13 meanings of medicine