In 2016, I discovered that Webster's New World Medical Dictionary jumps from culture to curretage, but has no definition for the words cure, cured, cures, nor even incurable. I thought it was an exception. I was wrong. It's the rule. I now maintain a growing list of medical dictionaries that don't define cure, cures, curing, cured, or incurable. For example,
The words "cure" and "incurable" do not appear in:
The Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary, Ninth Edition, 2015 nor in
The Bantam Medical Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 2009. "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").
Medical Terminology for Dummies, Second Edition, does not contain the word "cure".
A Dictionary of Nursing, Oxford, 2021 does not define cure.
John Lasts 1995 A Dictionary of Epidemiology and Porta, Miquel’s book of the same name, do not contain a definition of cure.
But, this is not “news.” The London Medical Dictionary, published by Bartholomew Parr in 1809, uses the word cure over 500 times without defining it.
In addition, the word cure is not medically defined and not in the index of all major medical references, including: Merck's Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, Harrison's Guide to Internal Medicine, Lange's Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, and Ferri’s Clinical Adviser. The word cure appears once in the over 950 pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, “advance the treatment and eventual cures for these conditions.“. Cured is not defined for any mental illness.
What is going on? Is cure a forbidden word in modern medicine? After discovering the absence of cure in medical dictionaries, I began serious research into the concept of cure, which led to the book A New Theory of Cure covering the two general causes of illnesses and their associated cures.
Today's medical practices have serious challenges with the word cure. From the start, we have no theory of modern medicine. There are cures, of course, and reference books like MERCK's Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy occasionally refer to them as cures. However, the use of the word cure in all authoritative references, is infrequent and inconsistent. Cure and cured are simply not medically defined for most diseases. In addition, most diseases are so poorly defined that cures cannot be detected, much documented, much less proven. “There is no cure for the common cold, influenza, measles…” - I’ve had them all. Cured.
Many organizations raising funds to 'fight' disease avoid the cure word. The American Cancer Society's mission statement does not contain the word 'cure'. The American Diabetes Association aims to end diabetes, not to cure it. The US Cancer Moonshot initiative does not contain a definition of cancer cured.
When cure is used, it is seldom defined, and perhaps more important, cures are never counted outside of clinical studies. If you cure your illness, whether it be a cancer, a depression, or even something as simple as the common cold, influenza, COVID, or scurvy , the cure cannot recognized, much less counted. Diseases, like obesity or poisoning, cannot be cured, because the cure is “a not something” therefore not eligible to be a cure in today's medical systems.
There are no tests for cured for most diseases. So, there are no independent tests of cured, much less “cured by” even for curable diseases. As a result: cures do not exist. Cured, cases of cured, cannot be counted, because cured is not defined.
Remissions, even spontaneous remissions can be claimed, but nobody cares except the doctor and patient. There is no proof, but proof is not important. Anyone can claim remission - nobody cares. Cured is not defined, so it is not possible to define the difference between remission and cure. No doctor is allowed claim cured publiclly. If you claim a cure, you're a quack, not a doctor.
In conventional medicine’s approval process bureaucracies, like the FDA, cure is a substance or treatment that cures. That's why there is "no cure for the common cold." Every healthy person cures their own, without treatment, without medicine. So it’s not a cure - there is no test for “common cold cured.” The concept exits, but is immeasurable. When we are healthier we cure our illnesses - colds, flu, COVID, even cuts and bruises faster. But those cures don’t count - so they are not counted. Cures accomplished by health, or by improving healthiness are not recognized by modern medicine. As a result, there are many invisible cures. In fact, most cases of cured are invisible. I’ve had COVID. Cured. Nobody cares. COVID cured is not medically defined. There is no proof I am cured, so there is no point in studying the causes of the cure. There is no record of any cases of COVID cured, except… when researchers need to study a cured patient for other purposes.
Can any illnesses be cured with medicine? Of course. Illnesses caused by parasites, infections, pneumonia, etc., are cured by antibiotics and other poisons. Illnesses caused by fungal infections are cured by anti-fungal medications. There are well defined tests to ensure that the cure is complete. So, why doesn’t cure not appear in most medical dictionaries?
Most cases of illnesses are easily cured, but not by medicines. No illness caused by a lack of healthiness - from arthritis, to depression, to heart disease and hypertension, and even obesity, can be cured by medicines. Lifestyle diseases are incurable. When the lifestyle changes, they go into remission. Not cured. Every illnesses caused by deficiencies, whether it be scurvy, caused by a nutritional deficiency, or bedsores, caused by a deficiency of movement, a deficiency of physical stress, a deficiency of social interaction - is cured by addressing the cause. No medicine can cure them. Any illness caused by toxicity, by toxic chemicals, or even toxic social environments, cannot be cured by medicines. They can only be cured by addressing the present cause.
Patient’s actions are non-medical actions, cannot be recognized as cures.
Many of today’s unrecognized cures were clearly recognized in the past. In the late 1800s, some of the best known cures are a wide variety of fasting cures, water cures, milk cures, grape cures, and even sunshine cures. There are historical records of cures of myopia, polio, diabetes, and cancer. These are real records of cures, not miracle cures. Today, these cures are simply ignored. Fasting, sunshine, water, milk, and grapes are not medicines - so they are not allowed to be cures. When they produce a cure, it doesn’t count. Polio, diabetes, and cancer are incurable. Cures don’t count even after they occur. No proof is possible without a definition.
Cure and cause are linked. But not, apparently, in modern medicine. Modern medicines treat signs and symptoms, generally ignoring present causes. As a result, cure is disappearing from our medical systems, our medical texts, the science and technology of medicine, and medical dictionaries.
Some medical dictionaries define cure. The newer, edition of Webster's Medical Dictionary, does define the word cure. However, the definitions provided are basic, non-medical. They are historical, not scientific, and identical to Webster’s standard (non-medical) dictionary definitions: "to make or become sound, healthy, or normal again" and "a course or period of treatment, esp: one designed to interrupt an addiction or compulsive habit or to improve general health." Incurable also appears in the new edition, but unfortunately, it is defined as "impossible to cure." It is not possible to prove that a case of illness is impossible to cure.
How can we cure, if cure is not defined?
We need to define cure, from a scientific perspective, not a medical bureaucracy perspective. We need definitions, such that cures and be tested and proven. We need to define cured for every illness - independent of treatment - and work to improve general and specific definitions of cure, and cured. This is the way of science. Until we do this, medicine will remain unscientific, depressing symptoms, without addressing cases of illness, never daring to claiming to cured, instead dismissing all cure claims as either hoaxes or miracles regardless of validity.
There is a myth, that medicines are intended to cure. But it’s clearly a myth.
A Scientific Definition of Cure
An illness element (having a single cause) is cured when:
the present cause has been successfully addressed
signs and symptoms of the illness, caused by the cause, have faded and gone
healing is completed
no more medicines are required.
Illness elements and their cures are then combined in various ways to define more complex diseases and cures.
An illness is cured when the cause is successfully addressed. We cure illnesses, one cause at a time. Every case of cured is an anecdote, a story, a single case.
There are three types of causes of illness:
attribute causes, like infectious agents, a dental cavities or cataracts, are addressed by transforming the causal attribute.
process causes, lifestyle causes, like a faulty diet, lack of sleep, or social abuse are addressed with healthy habits or lifestyle changes.
injuries are attributes cured by healing.
Disease is commonly diagnosed by symptoms, not by cause. This makes a case of disease very difficult, seemingly impossible to cure. Every illness can be cured. No disease can be cured. Today, when a disease is cured, it's a miracle, not a medicine.
It is common to have a disease with multiple cure causes, requiring multiple cure actions. Why? Because simple illnesses - with single causes - are easily cured. We ignore simple cures. An illness with multiple causes requires a doctor, becomes a disease.
A patient to suffering from two or three illnesses of depression, is two depressed, not too depressed - and needs two or more cures. One patient might easily suffer a depression illness caused by a nutritional deficiency as well as an identical depression illness caused by consuming toxic substances. There might even be a third depression illness caused by lack of sleep due to a stressful job, relationship, etc. Modern medicine makes no attempt to cure depression - although if you go back 50 years, most cases of depression were easily cured by healthy actions - recognized as cures then, but not longer recognized as cures, not even recognized as diseases by today’s modern medicine.
We can hardly fault Webster's, or Merck's, or Harrison's, or Lange's, or others for not providing a scientific definition of cure. The fault lies in the science, or the non-science, of today's medical bureaucracies, not in the authors of medical dictionaries.
After we recognize a basic definition of cure, we can create a science of cures. We have medical technologies. But we don't need technologies of medicine to cure.
We can build a language of cure. We can put cure, cures, and cured, back into the dictionary - and work to remove incurable.
to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure
Founder: Healthicine.org