In the 1840s, a doctor from Louisville purchased Mammoth Cave. One of his motives for purchasing the land was to conduct an experiment by inviting tuberculosis patients to live underground during the winter months to cure them.
It did not go well.
For more on this topic, check out THE PURSUIT OF HEALTH IN THE MAMMOTH CAVE, published in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1971, by Stanley Sides & Harold Malloy.
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