Classic TB sanatoriums had large windows and facilities to wheel patients into the sunshine.
Now researchers have explained how this treatment helped patients, through the sun-generated vitamin D.
The latest study shows that patients who take high doses of vitamin D, together with antibiotics, can recover more quickly.
The reason is because the vitamin is anti-inflammatory and reduces the damage caused by the infection, according to researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, UK.
The findings were reported last night in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers tested the vitamin D treatment on 44 TB patients in London and their fate was compared with another 51 patients.
They found that patients on vitamin D were also about to clear the TB bacterium faster from their sputum – reducing the time it took to achieve this by nearly two weeks.
Researcher Dr Adrian Martineau, said: "These findings are very significant. They indicate that vitamin D may have a role in accelerating resolution of inflammatory responses in tuberculosis patients. This is important, because sometimes these inflammatory responses can cause tissue damage leading to the development of cavities in the lung.
"If we can help these cavities to heal more quickly, then patients should be infectious for a shorter period of time, and they may also suffer less lung damage.
"More broadly, the ability of vitamin D to dampen down inflammatory responses without compromising the actions of antibiotics raises the possibility that supplementation might also have benefits in patients receiving antimicrobial therapy for pneumonia, sepsis and other lung infections."
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