David Bruce (microbiologist)

Early life and education

Bruce was born in Melbourne, Australia to Scottish parents: engineer David Bruce (from Airth) and his wife Jane Russell Hamilton (from Stirling), who had emigrated to Australia in the gold rush of 1850. He was an only child. He returned with his family to Scotland at the age of five. They lived at 1 Victoria Square in Stirling. He was educated at Stirling High School and in 1869 began an apprenticeship in Manchester. However, a bout of pneumonia forced him to abandon this and re-assess his career. He then decided to study zoology but later changed to medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1876. He graduated in 1881.

Medical career

After a brief period as a general practitioner in Reigate, Surrey (1881–83), where he met and married his wife Mary, he entered the Army Medical School in Hampshire at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley. He qualified the military examination in 1883 and joined the Army Medical Services (and served till 1919). For his first post he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1884 and was stationed in Valletta, Malta.

Bruce was appointed Assistant Professor of pathology at the Army Medical School in Netley in 1889, and served there for five years. He returned to military field service in 1894 and was posted to Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa. He was assigned to investigate the case of cattle and horse sickness (called nagana) in Zululand. On 27 October 1894, he and his wife moved to Ubombo Hill, where the disease was most prevalent. When the Second Boer War broke out in 1899, accompanied by his wife, he ran the field hospital during the Siege of Ladysmith (2 November 1899 until 28 February 1900). For his service during the war he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1900, he joined the army commission investigating dysentery in military camps, at the same time working for the Royal Society's sleeping sickness expedition.

Bruce served as a member of the Army Medical Service Advisory Board from 1902 to 1911. In 1914 he became Commander of the Royal Army Medical College, Netley, the position he held until his retirement as a Major-General in 1919. He was immediately appointed chairman of the governing body of the Lister Institute. During his career he published more than ninety-seven technical articles, of which about thirty of them were coauthored by his wife.

Death

He died four days after his wife in 1931, during her memorial service. Both were cremated in London and their ashes are buried together in Valley Cemetery in Stirling, close to Stirling Castle, beneath a simple stone cross on the east side of the main north-south path, near the southern roundel. They had no children.

Scientific contributions

At the time of his service in Malta, British soldiers suffered an outbreak of what was called the Malta fever. In 1886, he led the Malta Fever Commission that identified the organism that caused the fever as a bacterium Micrococcus melitensis (later renamed Brucella melitensis). Themistocles Zammit, one of the members of the commission, discovered the reason behind Mediterranean fever in 1905. Bruce discouraged the experiments being carried by Zammit and doubted his ability as a microbiologist. Eventually, when he learned of the positive results linking the fever with unpasteurized goat milk, Bruce tried to discredit the role of Zammit and take credit to himself. To a certain extent he succeeded, as it was renamed after him as brucellosis, however information about the role of Zammit has eventually surfaced.

When he was transferred to South Africa, he was sent to Zululand in 1894 to investigate the outbreak of cattle disease which the native called nagana. In 1903, he identified the causative protozoa, and tsetse fly as the vector, of African trypanosomiasis ("sleeping sickness"). He was Surgeon-General for the duration of the First World War from 1914–19 at the Royal Army Medical College, Millbank, London.

Brucella is the genus and Brucellaceae is the family of the bacteria which was named after him, in recognition of his discoveries. Brucella melitensis is the cause of undulant fever in man and of abortion in goats. It is usually transmitted by goat's milk. Trypanosoma brucei, the cause of sleeping sickness, is also named after him.

Honours and awards

Bruce was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1899. He served as editor of the Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps between 1904 and 1908. He was the recipient of the Cameron prize of Edinburgh University in 1901. He received the Royal Society’s Royal Medal in 1904, the Mary Kingsley Medal in 1905, and the Stewart prize of the British Medical Association. He was Croonian Lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians in 1915. He was awarded the Leeuwenhoek Medal in 1915, created a Companion of the Bath (CB) in the 1905 Birthday Honours, knighted in 1908 and upgraded to a Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB) in 1918. He was president of the British Science Association during 1924–1925.

Bruce's name features on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Twenty-three names of public health and tropical medicine pioneers were chosen to feature on the School building in Keppel Street when it was constructed in 1926.