Lucius Rüedi was the first physician to discover the healing effect of the high-Alpine climate on tuberculosis.
In May 1844 he reported in a letter to the Zürich health spa physician Conrad Meyer-Ahrens that children suffering from tuberculosis at various levels of severity were sent home cured with nothing but scars in the lung after having treated by him.
Rüedi's discovery shattered the prejudice about the so-called "mountain disease" prevalent among alleged experts at that time.
The thin, cold air at high altitudes, they argued, would excessively stimulate and ruin the lung, thus soon causing a general decay of the body.
The best-known was Carl who treated the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson in the winters of 1880-81 and 1881-82.