This is the well-known part of the history of brucellosis. Nevertheless, the other side of the coin is described by Edwards and Jawad (2006) [8] in a comment on an article by Dr. H Vivian Wyatt [15] in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine of October 2005, where they say, “First, Dr. Carruana-Secluna (the proper spelling is ‘Scicluna’, editor’s note) who accompanied Zammit to Chadwick Lakes, carried out a great deal of work for Sir David Bruce-he prepared the agar plates and the culture media and cultured the causative organism from the spleen samples of fatal cases. He never received proper recognition for his work and Sir David Bruce did not allow him to be co-author on any of his publications. Secondly, Surgeon Captain Matthew Louis Hughes assisted Bruce in his studies and first named the disease ‘undulant fever’. He also named the organism Micrococcus melitensis, although he was wrong about the source of infection, believing it to be resident in the soil and inhaled by humans.” Hughes was killed in the Boer war at the age of 32.

Sir David’s wife, Lady Bruce née Mary Elizabeth Steele, was a trained microbiologist and helped her husband’s research, drawing the fine illustrations to his papers.

Towards the middle of last century, the commonest species that infected humans in the States was B. abortus. The infection with this species is a self-limited condition. B. melitensis was less frequent. Other species, like B. suis, are rare in humans. At present, most human infections are related to B. melitensis [12]. A case of marine mammal neurobrucellosis has been reported in a laboratory technician working on this strain [14]. This disease is on the decrease around the world, but it is still an important affliction in Central and South America and especially in the Mediterranean basin. It is characterized by fever which is usually recurrent in nature, hence its eponym “recurrent undulant fever”. It is a protean condition and may affect a large number of the body organs. The CNS is one of its important localization, thus neurobrucellosis has become, along with cardiac brucellosis, an important clinical group. Neurobrucellosis is estimated, by some, at 10 % of the total numbers of Brucella cases [7, 13]; others estimate it at 8 % [2] and some at less than 5 % [8] and still others as low as 1.7 % [6].