Alice Catherine Evans in 1917 and published her work in the "Journal of Infectious Diseases" in 1918. She was met with skepticism, particularly because she was a woman and did not have a Ph.D. She warned that raw milk should be pasteurized to protect people from various diseases. During the 1920s, scientists around the world made the same findings, and eventually, "Brucella" was confirmed as the disease that caused what was then known as undulant fever and Malta fever. Her findings led to the pasteurization of milk in 1930. As a result, the incidence of brucellosis in the United States was significantly reduced.
Brucellosis (goats and sheep), "B. ovis" (sheep), and "B. suis" (caribou and pigs). "Brucella" species have also been isolated from several marine mammal species (cetaceans and pinnipeds). "B. abortus" is the principal cause of brucellosis in cattle. The bacteria are shed from an infected animal at or around the time of calving or abortion. Once exposed, the likelihood of an animal becoming infected is variable, depending on age, pregnancy status, and other intrinsic factors of the animal, as well as the number of bacteria to which the animal was exposed. The most common clinical signs of cattle infected with "B. abortus"