David Bruce (1855–1931) - Scottish pathologist and microbiologist

Sir David Bruce was born in Melbourne, Australia while his Scots father was installing a crushing machine at Sandhurst in the Australian goldfields. He was an only son, and when he was five years of age his parents returned home and settled in Stirling. David was subsequently sent to the Stirling High School, where he remained until he was fourteen years old.

He entered the university with the intention of reading zoology but changed to medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1876. He graduated from Edinburgh in 1881 and spent a large part of his career as a military physician.

In 1881, after obtaining his degree, he became an assistant to Dr. Stone, a practitioner in Reigate, and there met the lady, Miss Mary Elizabeth Steele, who, as his wife and fellow worker in all his subsequent scientific work, was to exert such a marked influence on his life and career.

In 1883, soon after his marriage, David Bruce joined the Army Medical Service and he received his commission as Surgeon-Captain on August 4, 1883.

David and Mary Bruce were assigned to Malta in 1884, where Bruce began a study of an often-fatal disease suffered by English soldiers assigned to the Maltese garrison. The disease, known as Malta, Mediterranean, or undulating fever, caused chills,sweats, and weakness.

He found the hospitals full of patients suffering from a mysterious complaint which sometimes resembled typhoid fever and sometimes malaria. Bruce set up a laboratory in an abandoned shack and spent weeks with the culture medium using Koch's techniques. In 1887 he discovered the causal organism at first called Microccus melitensis but later renamed Brucella melitensis.

Bruce chaired the Mediterranean Fever Commission which sat from 1904-1906 and the commission succeeded in tracing the reservoir of infection to the Maltese goat.

Shortly after his return to England in 1889, Bruce was named an assistant professor of pathology at the Royal Army Medical College at Netley. Several years later, he arrived in Natal, South Africa, to investigate an animal disease known as ‘nagana’, which killed cattle in the Zulu region.

In Africa, he was able proved that Trypanosoma brucei was the causative organism and that the vector was the tsetse fly. This work was of great help with his later research on sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis).

He returned to Britain in October 1901 and in 1903 was seconded to service in Uganda to study sleeping sickness. The symptoms included long lasting fevers leading to confusion and stupor, and the patients usually had enlarged lymph nodes and spleens.

When Bruce arrived, Aldo Castellani, who was on the verge of leaving, told him that he had found a trypanosome in cerebrospinal fluid. He taught Bruce the techniques for lumbar puncture and specimen examination.

Shortly afterwards Bruce proved that it was the causative organism of sleeping sickness which, like the trypanosome that causes nagana, was transmitted by the tsetse fly. Sleeping sickness is now called trypanosomiasis, the aetiologic agent is Trypanosoma gambiense, and the sole vector the tsetse fly.

Bruce was knighted in 1908. By 1914, the Bruces had returned to England, where David served as commandant of the Royal Army Medical College. He finally retired in 1919. He died twelve years later on the day of his wife's funeral.
David Bruce (1855–1931) - Scottish pathologist and microbiologist

Dr.Themistocles Zammit (1864-1935)

Sir Temi Zammit was born in Valletta on the 30th September 1864 at a time when Malta was an important British naval base and died 2 November 1935 with obituary notices in Malta and England. His parents were illiterate and yet they succeeded to nurture his thirst for knowledge and his ability to triumph in spite of all the obstacles he faced.

During his time, extreme poverty alternated with periods of economic prosperity that were often brought about by war.

After studying at the Lyceum and the University of Malta he obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1889. In 1905 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in the same University, of which he was also appointed Rector in 1920.

Dr Temi Zammit name gained renown as a result of his archaeological excavations of prehistoric sites in the Maltese Islands and also of his scholarly writings on the material found on such sites. He was one of the key persons to promote Maltese archaeology in the early 20th century.

In September 1896 he made the earliest Xray photograph taken in Malta, of a human hand – probably his own.

His first recorded experiments with Mediterranean or Malta Fever (now Brucellosis) modified the Widal precipitation test where bacteria and sera are mixed in a tube. On 14 June 1905, Temi Zammit, found that five out of six goats reacted to the blood test for brucellosis, then known as Mediterranean or Malta Fever. The work of Temi Zammit showed that infected goats transmitted brucellosis and that banning use of their milk would be effective.

In 1902 he made the first survey of brucellosis in civilians in Malta, comparing it with typhoid fever and concluding that it might be insect borne.

He served as the rector of the Royal University of Malta for some years, and also as the director of the National Museum. Author of several books in the Maltese language, he was awarded a DLitt Honoris Causa by Oxford University.
Dr.Themistocles Zammit (1864-1935)

History of brucellosis

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease of great animal welfare and economic implications worldwide known since ancient times. People with brucellosis may develop fever, sweats, headaches, back pains, and physical weakness. In severe cases, the central nervous system and the lining of the heart may be affected.

Brucellosis-type illnesses were recognized by Hippocrates in his Epidemics writings; the Apostle Paul is considered to have been infected following his being shipwrecked on the Island of Malta.

The prevalence of brucellosis was reported in the Mediterranean region and it was historically related with war campaigns. A British army surgeon, George Cleghorn, documented details of disease in the year 1751 in his literature with the title ‘Observations on the Epidemical Diseases in Minorca from the Year 1744 to 1749’.

The disease was described as a separate clinical entity as early as during Crimean war on the island of Malta. It came to the attention of British medical officers serving on the island after the Crimean War.

In Malta, David Bruce, a British army surgeon, saw first-hand an illness that caused the sufferers’ temperatures to soar to 41 degrees Celsius at night, only to normalize during the day. In 1886 he isolated a cocco-bacillus that he named “Micrococcus melitensis” from the spleen of a man who had died of “Malta Fever”.

The work of Dr Themistocles Zammit in 1905 showed that infected goats transmitted brucellosis and that banning use of their milk would be effective. Themistocles Zammit, a scientific member of the Bruce-led Mediterranean Fever Commission, proved that the reservoir for the organism was goat’s milk.

In 1897, Bernard Bang, a physician-veterinarian, studied a disease of cattle in Denmark referred to as “contagious abortion” and isolated an organism that he named Bacillus abortus.

Evans revealed that Micrococcus melitensis (Brucella melitensis) isolated from cows and pigs belonged to same genus and nomenclature of genus as Brucella was suggested in honor of army Major-General Sir David Bruce.
History of brucellosis