Medicine and remedy

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D.M. Procida - 31 Mar 2009 10:34 GMT

How are "medicine" and "remedy" connected with each other? Do "med" in
"medicine" and "remedy" refer the same thing?

I've read a suggestion that "medicine" shares a root with "mediate" (i.e
that medicine is that which mediates a person between sickness and
health). The same would work for remdiate, remediation, etc - however, I
haven't seen any actual evidence for this suggestion.

Daniele

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James Hogg - 31 Mar 2009 10:46 GMT

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:34:22 +0100,
real-not-anti-spam-address@apple-juice.co.uk (D.M. Procida)
wrote:

>How are "medicine" and "remedy" connected with each other? Do "med" in
>"medicine" and "remedy" refer the same thing?

Yes, the root is the Latin verb "medeor", meaning "I heal".

>I've read a suggestion that "medicine" shares a root with "mediate" (i.e
>that medicine is that which mediates a person between sickness and
>health). The same would work for remdiate, remediation, etc - however, I
>haven't seen any actual evidence for this suggestion.

That's because there is none. The root of "mediate" means
"middle".

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James

>Daniele

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D.M. Procida - 31 Mar 2009 10:58 GMT

> >How are "medicine" and "remedy" connected with each other? Do "med" in
> >"medicine" and "remedy" refer the same thing?
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> That's because there is none. The root of "mediate" means
> "middle".

Pages 219-220 of:

<http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=195119&pageindex
=4#page> ("The Etymology of Medicine") discusses this (and agrees that
the idea of medicus/mediator is nice, but unsubstantiated).

Daniele

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Jens Brix Christiansen - 31 Mar 2009 10:48 GMT

D.M. Procida skrev:

> How are "medicine" and "remedy" connected with each other? Do "med" in
> "medicine" and "remedy" refer the same thing?

Basically, yes. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=remedy

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Jens Brix Christiansen

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / March 2009

Medicine and remedy