Bruce, Sir David (1855-1931), a British military surgeon and parasitologist, specialized in the study of tropical diseases. In 1886, while on duty with the British Army in Malta, he discovered the bacillus that causes undulant fever, a disease now commonly known as brucellosis (see Brucellosis ). Later, in Africa, Bruce showed that sleeping sickness was transmitted by the tsetse fly.
Bruce was born on May 29, 1855, in Melbourne, Australia. He studied medicine in Edinburgh and worked in Berlin at the laboratory of the German physician and bacteriologist Robert Koch (see Koch, Robert ). Bruce died on Nov. 27, 1931.
