[1] Some sources claim that Hippocrates believed that salt-based therapies, including inhaling steam from saltwater, provided relief of respiratory symptoms.

In the middle of the 19th century, a clinic, founded in Mammoth Cave (Kentucky, USA), was intended for tuberculosis patients.

In 1973–1976, doctors Timová and Valtrová from the Children's Clinic in Banská Bystrica treated childhood asthmatics with speleotherapy with favourable results, which were published in the medical literature.

[9] [10] From 1981 to 1985, speleotherapy became the subject of official scientific research tasks, carried out under the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and the Geographical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

[15] Hoyrmír Malota led a research team that tested patients of the speleotherapeutic sanatorium in Mladeč in 1985-1987 and came to the clinically verified knowledge "that individual factors of the underground environment, or their complex connected by internal and external interactions, stimulate and modulate the immune system of the human organism directly.

It has been shown that the concentrations of Ca and Mg in cave air are not so significantly elevated as to be considered a therapeutic factor.

Due to the small number of studies, no reliable conclusion can be drawn from the available evidence on whether speleotherapy interventions are effective in treating chronic asthma.

On the other hand, basic studies in laboratory animals and in vitro cell cultures have demonstrated the efficacy and usefulness of speleotherapy.