Rock Doc

Normally, when a bacterium invades your body, it’s surrounded and engulfed by a white blood cell. At least that’s what we were taught in high school biology. If all goes well, the white blood cell kills the bacterium and the infection is over: case closed.

But a few bacteria have some tricks up their sleeves. One of them is the rod-shaped Brucella bacterium, the agent that causes brucellosis or what is sometimes known as “undulant fever” because it causes people to run debilitating fevers that wax and wane in intensity over long periods of time.

Brucellosis is nasty stuff. Untreated, it makes...