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Born
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Gained admission to the University of Edinburgh.
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Commissioned as a surgeon captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
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Sent to Malta, stationed in the Valetta Hospital. Impressed by Dr. Robert Koch’s recent discovery of the tubercle bacillus, he began to do some investigations on a disease called Malta fever.
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Isolated the micrococci following the method of Robert Koch and reported his observations. He continued to study the properties of this organism and proposed the name of Micrococcus melitensis.
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The Governor of Natal whom he knew while he was in Malta asked him to investigate a disease called nagana—a sleeping illness affecting cattle in the Northern Zululand.
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Bruce inoculated the blood from the infected cattle into healthy horses and dogs; they became acutely ill, and the blood swarmed with hematozoa. The hematozoon was confirmed to be a trypanosome
The Bruces discovered that the mode of transmission of the disease was the tsetse fly. -
T. Zammit, one of the Maltese member of the Commission for the Investigation of Mediterranean Fever headed by Bruce, found that goat milk was the disseminating vehicle for Malta fever.
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Dies