curative

curative, sanative, restorative, remedial, corrective are comparable when they mean returning or tending to return to a state of normalcy or health.

Curative is applicable to whatever effects or, sometimes, seeks or tends to effect a complete recovery especially from disease of body or of mind

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a curative drug

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curative regimens

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most medicines are alleviative in their action and not definitely curative. Rather, they overcome the symptoms of disease and give the patient a chance to recover— Morrison

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Sanative is a general term applicable to whatever is conducive either to the restoration of or the maintenance of health, whether of body and mind or of spirit or morals; the term often comes close to salutary in meaning

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the sanative virtue of action ... to dispel doubt and despair— Masson

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Restorative is occasionally applicable to what restores to health but more often to what revives someone unconscious or renews or refreshes someone or something overstrained or exhausted

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the restorative effect of rain on parched fields

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take a restorative drink before dinner

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that voyage proved entirely beneficial and restorative— Ellis

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Remedial is much the broadest term of this group and like the related noun (see REMEDY n) and verb (see CURE vb) is applicable not only to whatever alleviates or cures disease or injury of body or mind but to whatever tends to relieve or correct a faulty or evil condition (as of the community, the law, or the body politic)

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while . . . the teacher's greatest contribution lies in the prevention of maladjustment, he must also assume a major responsibility in remedial work with the student who has become poorly adjusted—C. C. Duns moor & L. M. Miller

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whatever action the court takes towards a convicted offender ... is in fact a punishment; and it does not cease to be so because it may also be used as a form of remedial treatment, adapted to the personality of the offender and directed to his social rehabilitation— Fox

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with poverty and humility she overcame the world, and cast down the devil with prayer and remedial tears— H. O. Taylor

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the communities affected entered upon a patient course of remedial action and successfully labored to prevent a recurrence of these disorders— Handlin

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Corrective (compare CORRECTIVE ri) in many of its uses comes close to remedial, but, unlike the latter, it cannot ordinarily replace curative; specifically it applies to what is designed to restore something to a norm or standard or bring it up (or down) to a desirable level from which it has deviated. In this relation the term is peculiarly applicable to material objects that supplement or compensate for a defective function or part, but it may be used interchangeably with remedial in most contexts, though the emphasis may be more on making good a defect or deficiency than (as in remedial) on relieving the distress it causes; thus, one would speak of corrective (rather than remedial) shoes for the relief of weak ankles, but one could say that ampng remedial (or corrective) measures for weak ankles are shoes with special lifts in the soles

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constantly called upon their corrective lenses to decipher documents— Ace

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such corrective declines need not, necessarily, represent the end of this greatest of all bull markets— Van Loan

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there is today special need for the balancing and corrective sanity of not taking ourselves and our time over- seriously— Alain Locke

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Analogous words: healing, curing, remedying (see CURE vb)