# Pre-antibiotic tuberculosis treatment **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 7, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-antibiotic-tuberculosis-treatment/784008 "2017-04-07T20:41:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 7
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2017, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-antibiotic-tuberculosis-treatment/784008/7 "2017-04-08T04:21:21Z")
> [@susan](#): > > TB treatment was pretty much benign to harmful before the development of streptomycin in the 1940s. Rest cure may have been boring, and it didn’t particularly help (other than, possibly, removing people from the environment of other diseases and improving their nutrition [if middle or upper class]). Unlike gold injections, collapsing the lungs, sawing at people’s rib cages, and other barbarisms, at least it didn’t actively hurt the patient. Para-amino salicylic acid (PAS) was the first effective anti-tubercular, and was on the market prior to streptomycin. PAS, which is still used occasionally, can have terrible GI side effects (it is, after all, an aspirin derivative) and streptomycin will make you deaf and in a permanent state of vertigo if you take it long enough. Dihydrostreptomycin, which is used now, is a little better but not all that much. Collapsing lungs, etc. did nothing for people whose tuberculosis struck in other organs. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-antibiotic-tuberculosis-treatment/784008)._