A bitter fruit plant (colocynth) used medicinally as a purgative in traditional medicine.
From Arabic al-handal 'the colocynth plant.' This word entered European medical texts through medieval Arabic pharmacology, where the bitter fruit was valued for its intense laxative properties.
Medieval physicians used alhandal as a 'purging' medicine so powerful that it became infamous—patients feared it more than the disease, and overdoses were actually dangerous, yet it remained in use for centuries.
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