In the Service of Humanity Major-General Sir David Bruce, who
died last week at the age of seventy-six, will always be remembered for his discovery of the cause and nature of three widespread diseases that worked havoc among men and animals. He showed that Malta fever was due to a micro-organism transmitted by goats' milk, and thus enabled the disease to be brought under control. He traced the organism which is accountable for the tsetse-fly disease in South Africa, and now the herds can be protected. In 1903 he made his famous discovery of the particular tsetse-fly known as Glossina palpalis, which carries the organism that induces the deadly epidemic of sleeping sickness, the depopulator of whole districts in Central Africa. Bruce was born of Scottish parents in Melbourne, but was brought up and educated in Scotland and entered the Army Medical Service nearly half a century ago. During the War he did much to promote the use of the anti-tetanic serum which, when administered promptly to a wounded man, prevented lockjaw. But it is as one of the founders of tropical medicine that he is best known.
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