Question: was there a cure for tuberculosis in the 1800s

Answer: No, As the century progressed, some surgical interventions, including the pneumothorax or plombage technique--collapsing an infected lung to ``rest'' it and allow the lesions to heal--were used to treat tuberculosis. Pneumothorax was not a new technique by any means. In 1696, Giorgio Baglivi reported a general improvement in tuberculosis sufferers after they received sword wounds to the chest. F.H. Ramadge induced the first successful therapeutic pneumothorax in 1834, and reported subsequently the patient was cured. It was in the 20th century, however, that scientists sought to rigorously investigate the effectiveness of such procedures. In 1939, the British Journal of Tuberculosis published a study by Oli Hjaltested and Kjeld Törning on 191 patients undergoing the procedure between 1925 and 1931; in 1951, Roger Mitchell published several articles on the therapeutic outcomes of 557 patients treated between 1930 and 1939 at Trudeau Sanatorium in Saranac Lake. The search for a medicinal cure, however, continued in earnest.