The Eradication of Malta Fever
02-01-1904 (Malta)
2 pages, typewriter, paper; 33 × 24 cm
National
Archives of Malta
NAM/GOV 2.2/14/9 February 1904
Malta Fever, also known as Mediterranean Fever, Undulant Fever or Brucellosis is a highly contagious disease caused by a microorganism. Its symptoms are similar to those of other febrile diseases.
In 1886 David Bruce, a British Army doctor serving in Malta, discovered the causative agent of the disease: a microbe that was named Brucella Melitensis.
The document presented here is the appointment in 1904 of that commission to investigate Mediterranean Fever. The commission included Themistocles Zammit (1864-1935), a Maltese doctor who had specialised in bacteriology in Paris and London.
The members started a systematic search for the microbe. Experiments were also carried out in goats. The task of experimenting with goats fell to Dr. Zammit who, on 25 June 1905, discovered the microbe in their blood. Zammit thus showed that the microbe was transmitted to humans through the consumption of milk from infected goats.
The same members of the commission rapidly showed that the microbe could be destroyed by boiling the goats.
By 1922 it was realised that pasteurisation of milk on a national scale was the only means of combating the disease. It was only put into effect in 1938 when authorities introduced the pasteurisation of milk and prohibited the sale of unpasteurised milk.