A snippet of undulant fever in Gozo one hundred years ago

Abstract

Undulant fever, also known as Remittent fever, Malta fever, Mediterranean fever, Brucellosis and up to 40 other names, is a type of infectious disease producing fever which goes up and down for a protracted time, leading to physical weakness. It is caused by the bacteria Brucella of which Brucella melitensis is the most common type in humans (The Centre for Food Security and Public Health, 2018). It is called Brucellosis because the bacterium causing it, Micrococcus melitensis, was discovered by David Bruce in 1887.1 It was a disease which caused complications in bone and other organs and lead to debilitating consequences rather than a high mortality rate. It should be noted that as early as 1904, Sir Themi Zammit had already discovered that goats were the reservoir for B. melitensis and so they were the vectors of the disease so that when humans consumed raw goats’ milk they got infected with the disease (Rizzo Naudi, 2019). On 7th October 1919 the Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for Gozo, Dr Adriano Cremona wrote to the Superintendent of the Victoria Hospital informing him that from the returns of deaths from 24th to 30th September 1919 there was a case of death from Acute Bronchitis of a male patient aged 70 from Nadur, whereas annexed certificate of death states that the patient died from undulant fever. The Superintendent was asked by the MOH to clarify which of the two causes of death was correct. If it was from undulant fever he was asked to report the case immediately and to state for how long the patient had been an inmate of the Gozo Ospizio. This shows the importance assigned by the health authorities of tracing all cases of undulant fever. This was important to see if the patient had contracted the disease while he was an inpatient at the Victoria Hospital. [excerpt]