Major-General Sir David Bruce was an Australian-born British pathologist and microbiologist who investigated Malta fever and African trypanosomiasis. He discovered a protozoan parasite transmitted by insects, later named Trypanosoma brucei after him. Working in the Army Medical Service and the Royal Army Medical Corps, his major scientific collaborator was his microbiologist wife Mary Elizabeth Bruce, with whom he published more than thirty technical papers.
Biography
Early life and education
Bruce was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Scottish parents: engineer David Bruce and his wife Jane Russell Hamilton, 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, 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. 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 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. For his service during the war he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1899, Bruce was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh. 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, 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 Bruce's 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. Themistocles Zammit, one of the members of the commission, discovered the carrier of the bacillus in 1905 to be goats' milk. Bruce discouraged the experiments being carried out 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 eventually came to light. When he was transferred to South Africa, Bruce was sent to Zululand in 1894 to investigate the outbreak of cattle disease which the natives called nagana. In 1903, he identified the causative protozoan, and tsetse flyvector, of African trypanosomiasis. He was Surgeon-General for the duration of the First World War from 1914 to 1919 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.
