The quest for 'brucella melitensis' in man and in the goat: an historical retrospect

Abstract

Surgeon Rear Admiral P.W. Bassett-Smith, when referring to the achievements of the Mediterranean Fever Commission of 1904·, stated that "no modern scientific work had been more successful or of greater use to humanity". One must, however, also add that no less than eighteen years of painful failure and frustration elapsed from the discovery by Bruce of the causative germ of Mediterranean Fever in man to its discovery in the goat by Zammit in 1905. Indeed the early story of 'Brucella melitensis' affords an admirable example of the vagaries of research work, of how contemporary medical concepts may deflect the research worker from the right path by restricting his focus of attention thus missing the connecting links in the transmission of disease of how he sometimes rubs shoulders with the vector of disease and fails to notice it, and of how the intrusion of a chance observation may bring to a successful outcome long years of planned but fruitless investigations. It is these aspects of the story of 'Brucella melitensis' that this paper sets out to relate.