In Europe, rates of tuberculosis began to rise in the early 1600s to a peak level in the 1800s, when it caused nearly <answer>25%</answer> of all deaths. By the 1950s, mortality had decreased nearly 90%. Improvements in public health began significantly reducing rates of tuberculosis even before the arrival of streptomycin and other antibiotics, although the disease remained a significant threat to public health such that when the Medical Research Council was formed in Britain in 1913, its initial focus was tuberculosis research.
When tuberculosis was at its worst in Europe, what percentage of deaths was TB-related?
25%