Medicine men pretended was unopened and contained (7)
I believe the answer is:
shamans
'medicine men' is the definition.
(I've seen this in another clue)
'pretended was unopened and contained' is the wordplay.
'pretended' becomes 'sham' (sham can mean pretended or fake).
'unopened' means to remove the first letter (without opening letter).
'and' becomes 'n' (common abbreviation for 'and').
'contained' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'was' with its initial letter taken away is 'as'.
'as' going around 'n' is 'ans'.
'sham'+'ans'='SHAMANS'
(Other definitions for shamans that I've seen before include "They use magic to cure illness and contact the gods" , "Medicine men" .)