Time Travelers (1976)

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Time Travelers is a 1976 movie starring Sam Groom, Tom Hallick and Richard Basehart.

Fearful of the recurrence of a virulent disease, the fastest hope is to find the cure that was found once before, on the eve of the great Chicago fire of 1871. Jeff Adams had bowed out of the space program for something he found more exciting: time travel. He and Dr. Clint Earnshaw travel back to 1871 to contact Dr. Joshua P. Henderson and find out how he treated his patients and kept them alive. They were supposed to arrive three days before the fire, in the country a few miles north, but instead they arrive on the morning of the fire in the heart of town. They introduce themselves to Henderson as being from Washington to help. Using modern equipment, they perform their own tests on the patients, and remain baffled as to how Henderson cured the patients.

Earnshaw and Adams finally stumble upon the solution after the fire has broken out (the movie assumes the story about Mrs. O'Leary's cow is accurate), and then race to their departure point before the fire destroys it, although Earnshaw himself has contracted the disease. One of his colleagues, back in 1976, wryly observes that he's the first patient to have the disease for over 105 years and survive it!