Health and medicine

The fifth entry is curar, and the sentence beside it — a ferida curou sem deixar marca — cannot be carried into English with the verb it most resembles. « The wound cured » is not a sentence anybody says. English splits this ground between two verbs and gives them different subjects. « To cure » takes the illness, or the person who has it, and points at whatever did the work: a drug cures an infection, a patient is cured, and an illness with no answer is called incurable. « To heal » is what damaged tissue does by itself: a wound heals, a burn heals over, a broken bone heals in six weeks. The second verb is the older stock and still carries its family with it, because « heal », « whole », « hale » and « health » are one word grown apart — which is why healing means being made whole again. Portuguese needs neither the split nor the second root, and curar serves the doctor, the patient and the wound alike. The two languages meet in one place only, the kitchen, where both of them cure ham.