What is the most important phrase in medicine? Many people might guess “YOU’RE CURED.” But no. Cured is not medical. How can I know this? Maybe it’s because I’m not a doctor? I know what happens when a case of disease is cured. Nothing.
Cured cases are no longer medical. Were they ever medical? They are cured.
We have is no medical definition of cured. We have no medical records of cured cases of any disease in medical practice. None. No doctor, medical clinic, hospital, medical system, nor medical insurance company documents, much less tracks cured cases.
Cured is not medical.
No medical researcher can track cured cases of any disease, because there is no data. Once a case of disease has been cured, the cases is simply ignored. Medical systems ignore cured cases and move on. They have work to do.
It’s worse. We have no recognized test of CURED for most diseases. Any disease.
The common cold is INCURABLE!
“There is no cure for the common cold…”
It’s a common trope. I’ve had lost of colds. So have you. All of them cured (unless you have one right now – which will be cured soon. It’s nonsense.
Cured cases are not medical.
CURED – is not Medically Defined
Old news and new. William Lewis’s A Complete Dictionary of the Whole Materia Medica, written in the late 1700s, does not contain an entry for cure, although the word cure appears over 100 times. A Medicinal Dictionary Including Physic Surgery Anatomy Chymistry And Botany, 1748, by R James, skips from curcuma to curmi, not defining cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. The London Medical Dictionary: Including under Distinct Heads Every Branch of Medicine, (Parr, 1809) skips from CURD to CURIMENTOS – having no entry for cure although the cure word appears hundreds of times in the text. Robert Hooper’s A Compendious Medical Dictionary published in 1809 skips from CURCUMA to CUTICLE, having no entry for cure, even though the word cure appears many times. Many, perhaps most medical dictionaries do not contain an entry for cure. Of course the word cure is used often in medical dictionaries, without a definition. Beeton’s Medical Dictionary, 1850 skips from curcuma to current. Cure is not defined. A Dictionary of Medicine, by Sir Richard Quain, 1880, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from cupping to cutis. The words cure and cured are used hundreds of times. A Dictionary of Domestic Medicine, by John Henry Clarke, 1890, skips from crying to cuts. Although the word cure is used often, there is no entry for cure.
Two hundred years ago, cured was not medical.
A Dictionary of Medical Science, 1903, defines cure as “course of treatment; restoration to health; remedy; restorative,” but does not define cured distinguish between treatments that do not cure and any that do – and does not defined cured. The word cure is used often in the text.
James Burnet (m.d.) author of A Dictionary of Medical Treatment, 1922, does not make an entry for cure, skipping from CRETINISM to CYSTITIS. Longman Medical Dictionary, 1982, skips from cryptorchidism to Curettage, without an entry for cure.
Today, we see little change.
Black’s Medical Dictionary, 1944 skips from curdled milk to curette. The, 2008 – 41st Edition skips from Culdoscopy to Curette. CURE is not defined, although it appears dozens of times. Cured appears over 20 times, but is also not defined. Cured is not medical.
Dictionary of Medical Terms (Barron), 2004, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from curare to curet, but incurable is defined, using the word cure, as being such that a cure is currently impossible within the realm of known medical practice.” Cured is also not defined, although it states “about one-third of patients with newly diagnosed cancers are ultimately permanently cured.”
Diccionario Medico, 2008 (the Spanish edition of the Concise Medical Dictionary of Oxford University Press – does not contain an entry for “curar” – the Spanish word for cure, much less the word “curado” Spanish for cured.
The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine 2017, Tenth Edition asks: “Illusory correlation: Associated events are presumed to be causal. But was it treatment or time that cured the patient?” and advises “Radiotherapy10 is used in >50% of all cancer and forms part of treatment in 40% of those considered cured.” – CONSIDERED CURED. There is no test, no possibility of PROVING CURED. Cured is not medical.
The Un Panda Concise Pocket Medical Dictionary, 2015 skips from curarization to curret. There is no entry for cure, much less cured. We might realize that the first language of the author is not English, when he defines Naturopathy as “A therapeutic system that employs natural forces as light, heat, air and water to cure ailments rather than drugs.” The only use of the word cured, is with Gonorrhea, where it advises “No sexual contact until cured.” But cured is not defined.
The online book: Coronavirus – A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet Reference, 2023 contains the word cure exactly once, in the entry for “Palliative: 1. Affording relief, but not cure. 2. An alleviating medicine.”
Cured is not medical.
Nursing Cures?
Amy Elizabeth Pope, writing the A Medical Dictionary for Nurses, 1914, skips from curd to curette, with no entry for cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. Churchill Livingstone Nurse’s Dictionary, 2012, skips from curare to curettage, although it does define cure indirectly, through “healing the natural process of cure or repair of the tissues” – a non-medical cure. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursing, 2023, by Law, Jonathan; McFerran, Tanya A. & Tanya A. McFerran skips from curare to curettage, without an entry for cure, although the word cure appears several times in different contexts, the word cured appears only once – “the abnormal presence of blood or fluid round the heart – can be cured by cutting the pericardium.” Bethel Ann Powers & Thomas R. Knapp, writing in Dictionary of Nursing Theory and Research do not provide any definition for cure, and the only cure recommended is a cure for the Hawthorne Effect, a disease that infects clinical research studies, not any person.
In nursing, cured is not medical.
Epidemiology?
John Last’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 1995 does not contain the word cure once in the entire text. Porta, Miquel’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2014 does not define cure, contains the word cure only three times, “no cure” and “insufficient bacteriological cure” and “apparent cure,” (not defined). The word cured only once, “considered cured” – also not defined. Cured is not medical.
Epidemiologically, cured is not medical.
Cured Mental Disorders?
In 1952, Philip Lawrence Harriman’s The New Dictionary of Psychology does not define the word cure, much less cured, skipping from cunnis to curve, normal probability. The word cure is used occasionally, but generally in cure dismissal or denial.
The 1974 book A Dictionary of Psychology by James Drever skips from curare to curiosity, without defining cure, much less cured, although he does speak of “Mental healing: used mainly of the curing of disorders by suggestion.”
The 1993 book A Dictionary for Psychotherapists: Dynamic Concepts in Psychotherapy has an entry for “CURATIVE FANTASY” but not for cure. It speaks of “cure hysterical symptoms,” “cure illness,” and “cure a disturbance,” “to be cured of neurotic difficulties,” “to cure him,” but not of curing any mental disorder or disease.
Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary, 2009, skips from curdling to cure, transference. Cure is not defined. The word cured is used a few times, largely in denial and statements like “Compensation neurosis has been defined as “a state of mind, born out of fear, kept alive by avarice, stimulated by lawyers, and cured by verdict” – presumably only by a verdict in the client’s favor.
The 2015 APA (American Psychological Association) Dictionary of Psychology Second Edition skips from curative to curiosity. Cure is not defined in psychology, although the word cure is used about 30 times. The word cured appears three times without a definition. Likewise, the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology, 2009, skips from cupula to curare – no entry for cure. The word cured does not appear in the entire text.
Is Cured Defined sometimes?
Butterworths Medical Dictionary 2d ed, 1978, provides an entry for cure, but makes no distinction between treatment, remission, and cure, instead offering statements like “A particular method of treatment designed to restore health,” “The treatment of disease by starvation,” and “the sudden, unexpected remission in a chronic disease without any obvious explanation.”
Cured without understanding, is not cured, not medical.
Sometimes, CURE is defined
But the definitions are vague and unscientific.
Medical lexicon : A New Dictionary of Medical Science, 1842, by Robley Dunglison, defines cure as “A restoration to health; also, a remedy. A restorative.” Health is defined as “sanitas” – the latin word for health, and the entry for sanitas only makes the definition of cure less clear, and remedy is defined simply as a medicament with no requirement to cure. George Gould in Gould’s Medical Dictionary, 1935, defined cure as “The successful treatment of a disease,” without defining success, but then added, “also, a system of treatment,” without any requirement that the treatment actually produces a cured state. The beautiful text, Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2012, by W. A. Newman Dorland defined cure as “1. the course of treatment of any disease, or of a special case. 2. the successful treatment of a disease or wound. 3. a system of treating diseases.” – managing to cover a number of bases, without providing anything useful to determine cured.
Cure, it seems, is sometimes medical, but cured is not.
The Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2007, by British Medical Association by the British Medical Association) defines cure as “To restore to normal health after an illness. The term usually means the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress. Medication or therapy that ends an illness may also be termed a cure.” Quite a good definition of first glance, although it makes no reference to the cause of the illness, and the statement “the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress,” makes little sense.
The disappearance of disease – cured – is not medical.
The 2005 Merriam-Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary defines cure “vb cured; curing vt : HEAL: a : to restore to health, soundness, or normality” apparently to cure the individual, without reference to illness or disease. But Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, Third Edition, 2008, does not contain an entry for cure. Where did it go?
Cure, cures, curing, and cured, apparently, are no longer medical. (note; the word cure did re-appear in the next edition, but the definition was scrapped from non-medical dictionaries. Cured is not medical.)
Mosby’s Medical Dictionary 9th Edition, 2013, begins with a vague general definition of cure: “1. restoration to health of a person afflicted with a disease or other disorder” but then quickly degrades into vague, poorly defined nonsense with “a course of therapy, a medication, a therapeutic measure, or another remedy used in treatment of a medical problem, as faith healing, fasting, rest cure, or work cure.”
Honest Doctors Deny Cured
“Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.” The Great American Fraud p. . Collier and Sons, 1905
Fear of Speaking the CURED Word
According to John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense “…doctors took to declaring that the world was cured. The surgeon-general of the United States in 1969: “The war against infectious diseases has been won.” These words were no sooner out than malaria, cholera and gonorrhea, all three theoretically beaten, began to mutate and so escaped the control of most drugs.”
Perhaps our medical systems fear speaking about cures, about cured cases, lest they disappear…
Saul also writes: “To cure is to eliminate. A good general knows that trying to eliminate the enemy simply causes the next war”
As Saul advises, we need to understand that we don’t cure diseases, no disease can be cured. We can only cure individual cases of disease. No disease can be cured.
Curing diseases is not medical.
When a case of disease is cured, it has been cured.
When a case of disease has been cured, it is cured.
It makes no difference if the cure was caused by a doctor, a medicine, a grandmother, or by the individual. Cured is not medical.
Wiener, Philip P. author of Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas also warns against the cured word, advising: “he who suffers from love finds no pleasure in being cured.” and “A psychoanalyst might have cured him, (Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita) and the novel would not have been written.”
And we can close with Francis Bacon’s famous warning “Cure the disease and kill the patient,” advising against focusing on the medical disease, and thus missing the reality of the patient’s overall health and illnesses.
What is the most important phrase in medicine? Many people might guess “YOU”RE CURED.” But no. Cured is not medical. How can I know this? Maybe it’s because I’m not a doctor? I know what happens when a case of disease is cured. Nothing.
Cured cases are no longer medical. Were they ever medical? They are cured.
There is no medical definition of cured. There are no medical records of cured cases. None. No doctor, medical clinic, hospital, medical system, nor medical insurance company documents, much less tracks cured cases.
Cured is not medical.
No medical researcher can track cured cases of any disease, because there is no data. Once a case of disease has been cured, the cases is simply ignored. Medical systems ignore cured cases and move on. They have work to do.
It’s worse. We have no recognized test of CURED for most diseases. Any disease.
Theory of Cure is reader-supported. To receive new posts, support my work, become a subscriber.
The common cold is INCURABLE!
“There is no cure for the common cold…”
It’s a common trope. I’ve had lost of colds. So have you. All of them cured (unless you have one right now – which will be cured soon. It’s nonsense.
Cured cases are not medical.
CURED – is not Medically Defined
Old news and new. William Lewis’s A Complete Dictionary of the Whole Materia Medica, written in the late 1700s, does not contain an entry for cure, although the word cure appears over 100 times. A Medicinal Dictionary Including Physic Surgery Anatomy Chymistry And Botany, 1748, by R James, skips from curcuma to curmi, not defining cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. The London Medical Dictionary: Including under Distinct Heads Every Branch of Medicine, (Parr, 1809) skips from CURD to CURIMENTOS – having no entry for cure although the cure word appears hundreds of times in the text. Robert Hooper’s A Compendious Medical Dictionary published in 1809 skips from CURCUMA to CUTICLE, having no entry for cure, even though the word cure appears many times. Many, perhaps most medical dictionaries do not contain an entry for cure. Of course the word cure is used often in medical dictionaries, without a definition. Beeton’s Medical Dictionary, 1850 skips from curcuma to current. Cure is not defined. A Dictionary of Medicine, by Sir Richard Quain, 1880, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from cupping to cutis. The words cure and cured are used hundreds of times. A Dictionary of Domestic Medicine, by John Henry Clarke, 1890, skips from crying to cuts. Although the word cure is used often, there is no entry for cure.
Two hundred years ago, cured was not medical.
A Dictionary of Medical Science, 1903, defines cure as “course of treatment; restoration to health; remedy; restorative,” but does not define cured distinguish between treatments that do not cure and any that do – and does not defined cured. The word cure is used often in the text.
James Burnet (m.d.) author of A Dictionary of Medical Treatment, 1922, does not make an entry for cure, skipping from CRETINISM to CYSTITIS. Longman Medical Dictionary, 1982, skips from cryptorchidism to Curettage, without an entry for cure.
Today, we see little change.
Black’s Medical Dictionary, 1944 skips from curdled milk to curette. The, 2008 – 41st Edition skips from Culdoscopy to Curette. CURE is not defined, although it appears dozens of times. Cured appears over 20 times, but is also not defined. Cured is not medical.
Dictionary of Medical Terms (Barron), 2004, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from curare to curet, but incurable is defined, using the word cure, as being such that a cure is currently impossible within the realm of known medical practice.” Cured is also not defined, although it states “about one-third of patients with newly diagnosed cancers are ultimately permanently cured.”
Diccionario Medico, 2008 (the Spanish edition of the Concise Medical Dictionary of Oxford University Press – does not contain an entry for “curar” – the Spanish word for cure, much less the word “curado” Spanish for cured.
The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine 2017, Tenth Edition asks: “Illusory correlation: Associated events are presumed to be causal. But was it treatment or time that cured the patient?” and advises “Radiotherapy10 is used in >50% of all cancer and forms part of treatment in 40% of those considered cured.” – CONSIDERED CURED. There is no test, no possibility of PROVING CURED. Cured is not medical.
The Un Panda Concise Pocket Medical Dictionary, 2015 skips from curarization to curret. There is no entry for cure, much less cured. We might realize that the first language of the author is not English, when he defines Naturopathy as “A therapeutic system that employs natural forces as light, heat, air and water to cure ailments rather than drugs.” The only use of the word cured, is with Gonorrhea, where it advises “No sexual contact until cured.” But cured is not defined.
The online book: Coronavirus – A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet Reference, 2023 contains the word cure exactly once, in the entry for “Palliative: 1. Affording relief, but not cure. 2. An alleviating medicine.”
Cured is not medical.
Nursing Cures?
Amy Elizabeth Pope, writing the A Medical Dictionary for Nurses, 1914, skips from curd to curette, with no entry for cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. Churchill Livingstone Nurse’s Dictionary, 2012, skips from curare to curettage, although it does define cure indirectly, through “healing the natural process of cure or repair of the tissues” – a non-medical cure. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursing, 2023, by Law, Jonathan; McFerran, Tanya A. & Tanya A. McFerran skips from curare to curettage, without an entry for cure, although the word cure appears several times in different contexts, the word cured appears only once – “the abnormal presence of blood or fluid round the heart – can be cured by cutting the pericardium.” Bethel Ann Powers & Thomas R. Knapp, writing in Dictionary of Nursing Theory and Research do not provide any definition for cure, and the only cure recommended is a cure for the Hawthorne Effect, a disease that infects clinical research studies, not any person.
In nursing, cured is not medical.
Epidemiology?
John Last’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 1995 does not contain the word cure once in the entire text. Porta, Miquel’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2014 does not define cure, contains the word cure only three times, “no cure” and “insufficient bacteriological cure” and “apparent cure,” (not defined). The word cured only once, “considered cured” – also not defined. Cured is not medical.
Epidemiologically, cured is not medical.
Cured Mental Disorders?
In 1952, Philip Lawrence Harriman’s The New Dictionary of Psychology does not define the word cure, much less cured, skipping from cunnis to curve, normal probability. The word cure is used occasionally, but generally in cure dismissal or denial.
The 1974 book A Dictionary of Psychology by James Drever skips from curare to curiosity, without defining cure, much less cured, although he does speak of “Mental healing: used mainly of the curing of disorders by suggestion.”
The 1993 book A Dictionary for Psychotherapists: Dynamic Concepts in Psychotherapy has an entry for “CURATIVE FANTASY” but not for cure. It speaks of “cure hysterical symptoms,” “cure illness,” and “cure a disturbance,” “to be cured of neurotic difficulties,” “to cure him,” but not of curing any mental disorder or disease.
Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary, 2009, skips from curdling to cure, transference. Cure is not defined. The word cured is used a few times, largely in denial and statements like “Compensation neurosis has been defined as “a state of mind, born out of fear, kept alive by avarice, stimulated by lawyers, and cured by verdict” – presumably only by a verdict in the client’s favor.
The 2015 APA (American Psychological Association) Dictionary of Psychology Second Edition skips from curative to curiosity. Cure is not defined in psychology, although the word cure is used about 30 times. The word cured appears three times without a definition. Likewise, the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology, 2009, skips from cupula to curare – no entry for cure. The word cured does not appear in the entire text.
Is Cured Defined sometimes?
Butterworths Medical Dictionary 2d ed, 1978, provides an entry for cure, but makes no distinction between treatment, remission, and cure, instead offering statements like “A particular method of treatment designed to restore health,” “The treatment of disease by starvation,” and “the sudden, unexpected remission in a chronic disease without any obvious explanation.”
Cured without understanding, is not cured, not medical.
Sometimes, CURE is defined
But the definitions are vague and unscientific.
Medical lexicon : A New Dictionary of Medical Science, 1842, by Robley Dunglison, defines cure as “A restoration to health; also, a remedy. A restorative.” Health is defined as “sanitas” – the latin word for health, and the entry for sanitas only makes the definition of cure less clear, and remedy is defined simply as a medicament with no requirement to cure. George Gould in Gould’s Medical Dictionary, 1935, defined cure as “The successful treatment of a disease,” without defining success, but then added, “also, a system of treatment,” without any requirement that the treatment actually produces a cured state. The beautiful text, Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2012, by W. A. Newman Dorland defined cure as “1. the course of treatment of any disease, or of a special case. 2. the successful treatment of a disease or wound. 3. a system of treating diseases.” – managing to cover a number of bases, without providing anything useful to determine cured.
Cure, it seems, is sometimes medical, but cured is not.
The Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2007, by British Medical Association by the British Medical Association) defines cure as “To restore to normal health after an illness. The term usually means the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress. Medication or therapy that ends an illness may also be termed a cure.” Quite a good definition of first glance, although it makes no reference to the cause of the illness, and the statement “the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress,” makes little sense.
The disappearance of disease – cured – is not medical.
The 2005 Merriam-Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary defines cure “vb cured; curing vt : HEAL: a : to restore to health, soundness, or normality” apparently to cure the individual, without reference to illness or disease. But Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, Third Edition, 2008, does not contain an entry for cure. Where did it go?
Cure, cures, curing, and cured, apparently, are no longer medical. (note; the word cure did re-appear in the next edition, but the definition was scrapped from non-medical dictionaries. Cured is not medical.)
Mosby’s Medical Dictionary 9th Edition, 2013, begins with a vague general definition of cure: “1. restoration to health of a person afflicted with a disease or other disorder” but then quickly degrades into vague, poorly defined nonsense with “a course of therapy, a medication, a therapeutic measure, or another remedy used in treatment of a medical problem, as faith healing, fasting, rest cure, or work cure.”
Honest Doctors Deny Cured
“Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.” The Great American Fraud p. . Collier and Sons, 1905
Fear of Speaking the CURED Word
According to John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense “…doctors took to declaring that the world was cured. The surgeon-general of the United States in 1969: “The war against infectious diseases has been won.” These words were no sooner out than malaria, cholera and gonorrhea, all three theoretically beaten, began to mutate and so escaped the control of most drugs.”
Perhaps our medical systems fear speaking about cures, about cured cases, lest they disappear…
Saul also writes: “To cure is to eliminate. A good general knows that trying to eliminate the enemy simply causes the next war”
As Saul advises, we need to understand that we don’t cure diseases, no disease can be cured. We cure cases of disease.
Curing diseases is not medical.
When a case of disease is cured, it has been cured.
When a case of disease has been cured, it is cured.
Wiener, Philip P. author of Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas also warns against the cured word, advising: “he who suffers from love finds no pleasure in being cured.” and “A psychoanalyst might have cured him, (Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita) and the novel would not have been written.”
And we can close with Francis Bacon’s famous warning “Cure the disease and kill the patient,” advising against focusing on the medical disease, and thus missing the reality of the patient’s overall health and illnesses.
Theory of Cure is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure