to take the cure
3
8.0
- idiom
- Archaic
:
seguir un tratamiento
- Unlike the old idea of taking the cure at the sanatorium at Saranac Lake, patients were under constant vigilance.
Examples
-
That was why his friends were not free to see him most afternoons; they were too busy taking the cure.
Fiction book (1994) -
"I took the cure."
Fiction book (1991) -
There is a permanent solution for that condition, and I'm sure no one will stop you from taking the cure!
Blog text (1) -
Bess, you can stay here and look after our husband whilst I take the cure.
-
- He's taking the cure.
-
To love a man who refused to take the cure, who was as tightly rooted to the earth as the trees he tended on his grandmother's farm: it was absurd, and yet it was.
Fiction book (1995) -
After struggling with addiction for years, he finally decided to take the cure in a rehabilitation program.
-
She knew it was time to take the cure when her health began to deteriorate due to her illness.
-
The doctor recommended that patients with chronic conditions take the cure to improve their health outcomes.
How Intensive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to undergo a course of medical treatment' is directly compositional from 'take' (to undergo) + 'cure' (a therapy/medicine), with the determiner 'the' not affecting meaning. This is a common verb + noun construction (compare 'take treatment'/'take medicine') and is cross-linguistically regular, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer the MWE.
Etymology
Take the cure comes from old spa towns where people travelled to take healing waters or baths as a cure for illness. So, it came to mean 'to get medical treatment'.