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York. The herd was kept in quarantine because of several deaths that occurred during the journey. Crewmen, an agent from the US Bureau of Animal Industry, which was responsible for the shipment, and a woman who drank milk that ‘‘escaped’’from the quarantine station displayed the characteristic symptoms of ‘‘Mediterranean fever.’’Lieutenant Colonel David Bruce, a physician of the Royal Army, who discovered ‘‘Micrococcus melitensis’’in 1887 in infected British soldiers residing in Malta, had forewarned the US sanitary authorities about the risk of ‘‘Mediterranean fever’’by importing goats from Malta. In November 1906, after isolation of ‘‘M. melitensis,’’the goats were destroyed. Almost 100 years after this episode, the genome sequence of Brucella melitensis (renamed after David Bruce) has been resolved by DelVecchio et al.(1), bringing new light to the understanding of the biology of this pathogen. The …