Definition of "medicine man" []

• A male shaman or shamanistic healer, especially among Native American peoples. (noun)
• A hawker of brews and potions among the audience in a medicine show. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The Oglala Sioux warrior and medicine man Black Elk1 had a life-changing ecstatic experience when he was nine years old and very sick."
• "The physician is mistrusted and is only consulted in the most desperate cases; the medicine man is aware that the forceps of his white brother are more efficacious than the rattling of the tum-tum, and, actuated by that same professional jealousy which is occasionally observed in more civilized communities, ho uses his influence to malign the stranger, and glorify himself."
• "Anthropologist Peter Freuchen lived among the Eskimos for years and observed the angakok or local medicine man go into trances.1 Freuchen watched Eskimo children who played games choking each other until they lost consciousness."