At the beginning of the twentieth century, tuberculosis was one of the UK’s most urgent health problems. A royal commission, entitled The Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Relations of Human and Animal Tuberculosis, was set up in 1901. It aimed to find out whether tuberculosis in ... read moreanimals and humans was the same disease and whether animals and humans could infect each other. This page describes how, by 1919, the Commission had evolved into the independent Medical Research Council.