# physician

Pronunciation: say "fi-ZISH-uhn" /fɪˈzɪʃən/

## Noun

1. A medical doctor who has been trained to treat illness and injury in people.
   - Simple: A doctor who treats people who are sick or hurt.
   - _The attending physician reviewed her chart before the morning rounds._
   - _Several physicians collaborated on the unusually complex diagnosis._
2. A specialist in internal medicine who treats illness with medication rather than surgery, in contrast to a surgeon.
   - Simple: A doctor who treats illness with medicine instead of doing surgery.
   - _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._

## 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").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/physician (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).