Just like us, words have a history. The word cure comes from Latin and is linked to the act of caring. This same root gives rise to the word *curator*, the person responsible for a collection or an institution, for example. Meanwhile, care, in the medical sense, was perhaps first described by Celsus: In hoc casu medici cura esse debet, ut morbum mutet (In this case, medical care is indicated to change the course of the disease) [1]. Today, when we think of a cure, we often speak of it as an isolated event within a given treatment. A cure for the flu. A cure for cancer. A cure for the novel coronavirus. A finish line that ends a journey. However, it is important to think of healing as a process that depends on multiple factors.
Medical care or medical healing is linked to restoring health (from the Latin salus — healthy; whole) and moving away from disease (from the Latin dolentia — pain), infirmity (from the Latin infirmus — *in* "not" + firmus "strong/firm"), or pathology (from the Greek pathos — suffering, affliction). Looking at the English verb to heal or the German suffix -heit in Gesundheit (health), both trace back to whole, also carrying the meaning of becoming complete again.
