A tree native to India and Southeast Asia whose oil was historically used to treat leprosy and other skin diseases.
From Sanskrit 'chalmugra' or Bengali 'chalmugara,' referring to a traditional Asian tree and its medicinal oil. The word entered English medical texts through colonial India.
Before modern antibiotics, chaulmaugra oil was literally the best hope for leprosy patients—it actually worked, giving people years of life back, and its discovery shows how indigenous medicine had real science centuries before we admitted it.
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