Mine Therapy

Mine Therapy
Historical records indicate an improvement in breathing of miners from Roman and medieval times. In 1843, Dr. Feliks Boczkowski, a Polish physician stationed at a salt mine, noticed that miners there did not suffer from lung diseases. During WWII, Dr. Karl Hermann Spannagel noticed an improvement in his patients after they hid in salt caves to escape heavy bombing. Most recently, in the 1950s it was documented that Polish mine workers rarely suffered from tuberculosis. 

Research suggests that salt-permeated air helps dissolve phlegm in the bronchial tubes and kills micro-organisms that cause infections. This greatly helps patients undertaking asthma treatment and so mine therapy is currently being practiced in Slovakia, Poland, and Ukraine.