[Medicine-Man], one among the American Indians who professes to cure diseases or exorcise evil spirits by magic.
[Medina] (lit. the city) (76), called also Medina-en-Nabi, 210 m. N. of Mecca, the City of the Prophet, as the place in which he found refuge after his "flight" from Mecca in 632; it was here he from that date lived, where he died, and where his tomb is, in a beautiful and rich mosque called El Haram (i. e. the inviolate), erected on the site of the prophet's house. See [Hegira].
[Mediterranean Sea], so called by the ancients as lying in the presumed middle of the earth surrounded by Europe, Asia, and Africa; the largest enclosed sea in the world; its communication with the Atlantic is Gibraltar Strait, 9 m. wide; it communicates with the Black Sea through the Dardanelles, and in 1869 a canal through the isthmus of Suez connected it with the Red Sea, 2200 m. long by 100 to 600 m. broad; its S. shores are regular; the N. has many gulfs, and two great inlets, the Ægean and Adriatic Seas; the Balearic Isles, Corsica, and Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Cyprus, and Crete, the Ionian Isles, and the Archipelago are the chief islands; the Rhône, Po, and Nile the chief rivers that discharge into it; a ridge between Sicily and Cape Bon divides it into two great basins; it is practically tideless, and salter than the Atlantic; its waters too are warm; northerly winds prevail in the E. with certain regular variations; the surrounding territories are the richest in the world, and the greatest movements in civilisation and art have taken place around it in Africa, Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, and Rome.
[Medium], in modern spiritualism a person susceptible to communication with the spirit-world.
[Medjidie], an Ottoman order of knighthood instituted in 1852 by the Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid, as a reward of merit in civil or military service.
[Médoc], a district in the dep. of the Gironde, on the left of the estuary, in the S. of France, famous for its wines.
[Medusa], one of the [three Gorgons] (q. v.), is fabled to have been originally a woman of rare beauty, with a magnificent head of hair, but having offended Athena, that goddess changed her hair into hideous serpents, and gave to her eyes the power of turning any one into stone who looked into them; [Perseus] (q. v.) cut off her head by the help of Athena, who afterwards wore it on the middle of her breastplate or shield.
[Medway], a river in Kent, which rises in Surrey and Sussex, and which after a NE. course of 58 m. falls into an estuary at Sheerness.
[Meeanee], a village in Sind, 6 m. N. of Hyderabad, where Sir Charles Napier defeated an army of the Ameer of Sind in 1843.