Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary Third Edition uses the word “treatment” 917 times but does not provide a definition for “treatment.” It uses the word cure 7 times, not counting phrases like “incurable”, “no cure”, and “cure-all.” Not every medical dictionary is missing “cure”. Some define the word cure with a standard, non-scientific definition.
“Cure” does not appear in Barron’s Dictionary of Medical Terms, Sixth Edition, 2013, although “incurable” is defined as “being such that a cure is impossible within the realm of known medical practice“. The London Medical Dictionary, published in 1819, uses the word cure several times but does not provide a definition of cure.
There is no scientific medical definition of cure. No current medical reference text contains the word “cure” in the title, in the index, nor in the table of contents.
Medical reference texts, on the other hand, often use the word “treatment”, or similar words. Lange’s Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, Merck’s Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, and Harrison’s Guide to Internal Medicine.
The words “therapy”, “medicine”, “treatment” are common. Used often in conventional medicine theory and practice.
Cure? Not ok. Over 50% of cancer doctors avoid the word cure with their patients and advise their staff to never use the word cure. If you claim to cure any disease – you are considered a charlatan, a quack. If you actually cure, you’re a miracle worker, a saint.
Most conventional medicines are designed, tested, approved, manufactured, packaged and sold to “treat” diseases, not to cure.
Try this challenge. Head over to your medicine cabinet: find a medicine with the word “treat” on the package. Easy peasy.
Now… Find a medicine with “cure” on the package or insert. Good luck. Try your local pharmacy, look for an OTC (over the counter) medicine with “cure” on the label. Good luck. Do an internet label search. Try to find a medicine, any medicine, that claims to cure any disease. It is possible – but they are few and far between.
The cure for this ill is not to sit still,Or frowst with a book by the fire;But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,And dig till you gently perspire; Rudyard Kipling Click To TweetArthritis? Incurable. Depression (and any other mental disorder)? Incurable. Diabetes? Incurable. Heart disease? Incurable. There is no cure for the common cold. No cure for measles.
No cure for the flu, and no cure for the pandeadly flu – even though over 300 million patients are currently reported as RECOVERED.
It’s not hard to define cured, but there is little medical difference.
Health is whole. An illness is a hole in our healthiness. We cure by filling the hole with health. Most illnesses can only be cured with health, not by medical treatments. An illness is cured by addressing its present cause, a cause that is only rarely an absence of medicine or medical treatment.
To your health, Tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure (there is no old theory of cure)
