In 1841 the doctor and surgeon of the Wieliczka salt mines (Feliks Boczkowski) found that the miners did not suffer lung diseases, such as tuberculosis, unlike the rest of the population. He made his first publication in this regard in 1843.

 

The next step was to apply the benefits of salt inside the mines, creating the first sanatorium in the Wieliczka salt mine in Poland in 1958. Thus speleotherapy arises, consisting of the prolonged stay inside the natural caves of salt benefiting from a saline microclimate. No one knows when or who started this technique for the first time.

 

The founder of Speleotherapy in Ukraine and the USSR was Professor MD Torokhtin, under his direction in 1968 an experimental clinical hospital for allergic respiratory diseases was organized at the Solotova salt mine No. 8 in Ukraine (in Solotvino). The salt mine was located at a depth of up to 300 meters, and for obvious reasons, it could not accommodate everyone who wanted to experience the effect of salt.

 

In 1976, the first hospital starts operating in Ukraine, based on the Solotva salt mine No. 9, and a second phase was launched in 1980 with the Republican Hospital of Ukraine.

 

The results obtained forced to think seriously about the development of speleotherapy, but there were simply not so many salt mines and caves with the required microclimate, and it was not very convenient to have a hospital at those depths.

 

In 1985, “Methodology for the treatment of patients with bronchial asthma in the conditions of the artificial microclimate chambers" was published under the direction of the Director of the Institute, Professor M. Torokhtin.

 

Given the limitations of access and duration of permanence inside the natural salt mines, the creation of artificial rooms that recreate the climate of the salt mines and where the depth of the location did not intervene as a factor were devised. The dry salt spray air had to be saturated, creating a new technology in the USSR: the Halogenerators.

 

In 1990, the Ministry of Health of the USSR approved the techniques developed by building the first room at the Institute of Pulmonology in St. Petersburg. This marks the beginning of Halotherapy.