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THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 
far south as the Cape Province, in India and China, and even in some parts 
of America. It was very prevalent in Malta in the old days, and rendered 
the island one of the most unhealthy of all our foreign military stations. 
When I arrived in Malta, in 1884, I found that every year, on an average, 
some 650 soldiers and sailors fell victims to it, and, as each man remained 
on an average 120 days in hospital, this gave the huge total of about 
80,000 days of illness per annum from this fever alone. 
The British had held Malta since the beginning of last century, and 
although much attention had been given to the fever and its symptoms 
had been fully described, no advance was made towards its prevention until 
1887, when the living germ, the Micrococcus melitensis, causing it was 
discovered. 
At this time a good deal of work was expended in studying the natural 
history of the fever and the micrococcus, but all to no purpose. Nothing 
was discovered to give a clue to any method of prevention. 
At the Naval Hospital especially everything in the way of prevention 
was done that could be thought of: the water supply and drainage were 
thoroughly tested, the walls were scraped and every corner rounded off 
where dust might lie, immaculate cleanliness reigned; but all these 
precautions proved useless. Almost every sailor who came into the hospital 
even for the most trivial complaint took Malta fever, and after a long 
illness had to be invalided to England. 
Things remained in this very unsatisfactory state for seventeen years, 
until 1904, when the Admiralty and War Office, alarmed at the amount 
of sickness and invaliding in the Malta garrison, asked the Royal Society 
of London to undertake the investigation of the fever. This was agreed to, 
and a Commission was accordingly sent out in the same year and remained 
at work until 1906. 
During the first year every likely line of approach was tried. A careful 
study was made as to how the micrococcus entered the body, how it left 
the body, its behaviour outside the body, its pathogenic action on various 
animals; but still no indication of a method of prevention showed itself. 
Next year, however, in 1905, the problem of prevention was solved, 
and that by the merest of accidents. 
In the previous year experiments had been made with the object of 
finding out if the goat, among other animals, was susceptible to the disease. 
The goats in Malta, which supply all the milk, are very much in evidence, 
as they are driven about in small herds and milked as required at the 
doors of customers. Several goats had been injected with cultures of the 
