These words all mean to restore to health or soundness a diseased or injured condition, especially by means of medical attention. Treat is the most general word. To treat medically is to accept someone as a patient, to diagnose his illness and to help relieve it.

• After the accident, the truck driver was treated for cuts and bruises; some skin diseases are difficult to treat .

Treating may specifically involve the prescribing of drugs, special diets, exercises, etc., or simply advice on habits of living, but all these measures involve the overall effort to restore a sick or injured person to health.

Cure usually applies to diseases, heal to injuries.

• Penicillin cured him of pneumonia; The cut on his finger healed quickly.

Cure is sometimes used to suggest a sudden and dramatic improvement.

• The blind man was miraculously cured at the shrine; At any moment someone may discover how to cure cancer.

Healing , on the other hand, is usually a slow process, sometimes of very long duration. It is never quick or dramatic: His injured back had been healing nicely until he wrenched it again yesterday. In this sense mend is a close synonyms, but suggests, in accordance with its literal meaning, a drawing together of parts, whereas heal implies simply a return to a healthy condition: His fractured wrist is mending (or healing ) rapidly.

In some contexts heal does suggest the charlatan or quack, possibly from the application of the term "healer" to medical poseurs. In other cases heal sounds pretentious and high-flown: A physician’s sacred duty is to heal the sick. Cure and heal are sometimes used figuratively: to be cured of coming late to breakfast; to be healed of old regrets.

Remedy also may mean to cure or heal by medical treatment. Aspirin may remedy a headache, or specially fitted shoes remedy fallen arches. But one is more likely to say that aspirin cures a headache and that special shoes correct fallen arches. In its wider sense, remedy means to overcome a defect or undesirable state of affairs not necessarily having to do with health.