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Why is spirit power in Native American cultures translated as "medicine"? Any other culture's concept of spirit power I can think of is translated as magic--Hermeticism, Qabalah, witchcraft, seiðr, mana, even qi. So why are concepts like manitou and orenda translated as "medicine" instead of magic?

My guess would be because the primary job of shamans was to be healers. So magic = medicine.

I know in many systems magic = apothecary = poison. For example, many instances of "witch" and "witchcraft" in the Bible may be translated as "poisoner" and "poison". And the line between poison and medicine is a pretty narrow/nonexistent one, also see the Greek concept of φαρμακον.

That is a good point, and I believe it was Plato who said that men most approach the gods in the ability to heal.

It would be interesting to know, but difficult to research, where and when exactly this usage originated, whether there was a specific word in a specific language that was calqued as “medicine”, and which other groups of people picked up the same usage before it became a stereotype of “broken” English.

etymonline.com has "medicine-man" from 1801 but suggests "medicine" itself was adopted earlier.

The healing-equals-medicine account seems the most reasonable, and then the meaning was extended to other things that worked by the same mechanisms healing was traditionally thought to involve, rather than taking the European path to refer to substances that have the same effect.

wiktionary says that 'medicine man' is a calque from Ojibwe. But I think the general outline of the thing is likely to be cross-culturally common: doctors use medicine, so what doctors use (ie magic, rituals, etc) is medicine.

Cf. "witch doctors" - doctors/wizards who specialise is combatting the evil work of witches. [originally a term from rural england, later used of african equivalents by analogy. I think juju men are sometimes called juju doctors as well?

I guess the magic/medical science distinction is just not one that is immediately obvious to most cultures.

Salmoneus wrote:wiktionary says that 'medicine man' is a calque from Ojibwe. But I think the general outline of the thing is likely to be cross-culturally common: doctors use medicine, so what doctors use (ie magic, rituals, etc) is medicine.

Cf. "witch doctors" - doctors/wizards who specialise is combatting the evil work of witches. [originally a term from rural england, later used of african equivalents by analogy. I think juju men are sometimes called juju doctors as well?

I guess the magic/medical science distinction is just not one that is immediately obvious to most cultures.

That's a good point. I actually wondered if there might be some analogies in Africa, which I'm generally less familiar with than Europe, America, or Asia.

When the Iora people met British settlers in the place that was to become Sydney, they used their word for "clever man", garadigan, to describe the British surgeons. A garadigan is glossed as "doctor or a person skilled in healing wounds, clever man, sorcerer". Pemulwuy, a fighter who led the local people in wars against the British, was rumoured to be immune to bullets. He was a garadigan. The equivalent figure in Aboriginal cultures of the Northern Territory is sometimes called a "kadaitcha" or "kadaitcha man."

Zaarin wrote:That's a good point. I actually wondered if there might be some analogies in Africa, which I'm generally less familiar with than Europe, America, or Asia.

Among the Zulu, the Sangoma are traditional healers who use divination in diagnosing and treating illnesses, and have often been referred to as "witch doctors" by Europeans. Other people in the region have their own terms for traditional healers, but Sangoma has apparently become something of a blanket term for healers in southern Africa, at least among English speakers.