Malta Fever

A Century Ago (March 4), carried a report from the New York Herald dated March 5, 1906, of an important discovery by the Commission appointed by the British government, to study "the problem of Malta Fever".

This Commission for the Investigation of Mediterranean Fever of which the Maltese physician Themistocles Zammit formed part found that blood from Maltese goats picked at random reacted to the organism responsible for causing Malta Fever. Dr Zammit further discovered that the organism in question, Brucella melitensis, could be recovered from the blood of a goat and cultured in vitro. However, it remained to be shown that an infected goat could cause Malta Fever in a human being.

Your readers might be interested to learn that Paul Cassar, in his Medical History of Malta, recounts how an unpremeditated experiment on human beings "led to this important and central fact being confirmed".

"Mr Thompson of the United States Bureau of Animal Industry obtained a herd of 65 goats from Malta and shipped them to America via Antwerp on the SS Joshua-Nicholson on August 19, 1905. During the voyage many of the ship's company partook freely of the goat's milk. On arrival at Antwerp the goats were re-embarked on the SS St Andrew and again during the passage to New York a large quantity of milk was consumed by the crew. Practically everyone on the Joshua Nicholson who drank the milk developed undulant fever while bacteriological examination of the milk of several of the goats that reached America resulted in the recovery of the micrococcus."