physician
Pluralphysicians
- 1A medical doctor who has been trained to treat illness and injury in people.
The attending physician reviewed her chart before the morning rounds.
Several physicians collaborated on the unusually complex diagnosis.
Note
The general sense, in which physician simply means a qualified doctor of human medicine. Unlike the narrower internal-medicine sense, it no longer sets the physician against the surgeon. In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1881–1882), a doctor goes to London to find a physician to take charge of his practice. The two words stand in for each other, and here physician is simply the more formal-sounding name for the same profession.
- 2A specialist in internal medicine who treats illness with medication rather than surgery, in contrast to a surgeon.
The physician managed his diabetes with insulin and diet rather than referring him for an operation.
Hospitals of that era kept physicians and surgeons in clearly separate roles.
Similardoctor
Note
The name carries the older word physic, the art of healing by medicine. It came through Old French fisicïen, from fisique, "art of healing", back to Latin physica, "natural science", and Greek for "knowledge of nature". That history explains the contrast with the surgeon: the physician worked with remedies, not operations. Watch the French cousin, though, because modern physicien means "physicist", a sibling from the same root.
Practice
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Origin
This comes from Middle English fisicien, from Old French fisicïen, based on fisique ("art of healing"), from Latin physica ("natural science"), from Ancient Greek phusikḗ epistḗmē ("knowledge of nature"), from phusikós ("pertaining to nature"). It is formed from physic + -ian and displaced the native English word leech ("physician").