brucellosis

brucellosis, infectious disease of humans and domestic animals characterized by an insidious onset of fever, chills, sweats, weakness, pains, and aches, all of which resolve within three to six months. The disease was initially referred to as Malta fever, having been observed first in the 1850s during the Crimean War. It was later named for British army physician David Bruce, who in 1887 first isolated and identified the causative bacteria, Brucella, from the spleen of...