PHYSICK : is in General the Science of all material Beings, or whatsoever concerns the System of this visible Word, tho’ in a more limited and improper Sense it is apply’d to the Science of Medicine the Art of curing Diseases, or Medicines prepared for that purpose Branching Fields of Science MEDICINE : the Art of Physick also a Physical Remedy.Īnd yet, in the same dictionary, Bailey also clearly expresses awareness of a changing vocabulary as the scientific standards evolved:
In the 1725 dictionary of Nathan Bailey, the largest dictionary of its time, the definition of medicine is written in terms of physic: William Camden, Britain, or A chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, 1637 Thus did they all things that were contrary to their safety, as if no physic or medicine had been bestowed upon the world by the true physician of all Medicine was a synonym for this “remedy for disease” use of physic, and the two words co-existed for centuries:
Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Nashe used physic as the personification of medicine in his poem called “A Litany in Time of Plague”: More needs she the divine than the physician. This Physicke but prolongs thy sickly days ( Hamlet) In Shakespeare’s day, physic was used to mean “medicine” and physician was used as we still do today, meaning “one who practices medicine”: In pre-modern times the study of medicine and natural science were closely connected, and the term physic applied to both. It turns out that physic was used, starting in the 1400s, to mean “the practice of healing disease” and “a remedy for disease”-both now usually expressed by the word medicine. The answer can be found through the lexicographical method.