Dictionary

doctorcraft en · NOUN

Etymology

From doctor + -craft.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) The skills and expertise of a doctor; medicine.
   • […] for even to the latter the arm of persecution reaches, the plea of doctorcraft being that the people are to be saved from themselves. 1916, William Henry Webb, Standard Guide to Non-poisonous Herbal Medicine:
   • 'Doctorcraft', as Mrs Lowe called it, would, 'like priestcraft, enslave us all', and must be replaced by the cool common sense of the ordinary man. 2014, Sarah Wise, Inconvenient People:
   • So it was with respect to the Poison Bill, which is now a dead letter, merely because it was found that doctorcraft, being the principal meddlers with poisons, they could not be interfered with. 1858, Cambridge essays: contributed by members of the University:
   • The Despotism of doctorcraft! 2001, Christopher Hoolihan, An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater:
   • "I am," he gasconaded, "like a huge rough stone rolling down from a high mountain, and the only polish I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else, striking with accelerated force against religious bigotry, priestcraft, lawyercraft, doctorcraft, lying editors, suborned judges, jurors, and the authority of perjured executives, backed by mobs, blasphemers, licentious and corrupt men and women, all hell knocking off a corner here and there. 2012, Ralph P. Vander Heide, Judith H. Vander Heide, Chris and Louisa, page 81:
   • There have been kingcraft and lawyercraft, doctorcraft, and many other crafts beside, each virulent in proportion to the completeness of the mystery and of the monopoly. 1847, Francis William Newman, On the Relations of Free Knowledge to Moral Sentiment, page 12:

Forms