Curious about "curious"

I am interested in learning more about the word curious because it is a word that has two interesting and distinct meanings, and I would like to know how these separate meanings came about. The root of the word appears to be "cure," which doesn't seem to relate at all to its modern meanings, so I'm also interested in archaic meanings of curious.
I also don't often use the word curious in its meaning of peculiar or strange. When I do use it, it is most often in the form of curiosity, the noun. It is a word that really applies to me in the sense of my eagerness to learn, and I associate curiosity with a certain amount of imagination and wonder. To me, curiosity isn't a negative concept (i.e. curiosity killed the cat) as I think curiosity is always an important aspect of a student's education and an adult's life. In science, curiosity is what drives new experiments and what produces wondrous new results, and that is something I will take with me in my future.

H. L. Malchow, ‘Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ (1993)

·      Contemporary attitudes towards non-whites

o   With ranking of foreign organisms and creatures came ranking of people (‘pseudo-scientific racism’)

o   Xenophobia and ethnic prejudice validated by national conflicts

o   Beginnings of fear and hope for abolition of slavery

·      Characterization of “Other”

o   Anti-slavery argument relied on imagery that, instead of portraying blacks as equals, reiterated an image of other, childlike, suffering, degraded

o   Constructed out of a historical tradition of the threatening “other”—skin tone, colossal size and primitive eating habits,

·      Evidence of Mary Shelley’s interest in issue of slavery/Africa

o   1814—read first two volumes of Mungo Park’s relation of interior of western Africa

o   1814-1815—read history of British West Indies, by liberal Jamaican Bryan Edwards, inc. horrors of slave rebellions

·      Anti-slavery debate

o   “How much the monsters excitable character is the result of his unique physiology, and how much of his environment, is an ambiguity which exactly parallels the central conundrum of the anti-slavery debate”

o   Vegetarians vs. cannibals (conflicting image)

o   Child who owes existence to white male patron

o   Victor as guilty slave master

·      Stage interpretations

o   Sacrifice of subtlety and ambiguity in favor of melodrama to fit audience’s expectations

o   Demonic and alchemical elements; comedy, singing and dancing

o   Mute beast, cannibal, caricature