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Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz, better known as Oswaldo Cruz (August 5, 1872, São Luíz do Paraitinga, São Paulo state, Brazil – February 11, 1917, Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro state) was a Brazilian physician, bacteriologist, epidemiologist and public health officer and the founder of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute. He also occupied the 5th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1912 until his death in 1917.
Oswaldo
Gonçalves Cruz was born on August 5, 1872 in São Luis do
Paraitinga, a small city in São Paulo State, to the physician
Bento Gonçalvez Cruz and Amália Bulhões Cruz.
Still a child, he moved to Rio de Janeiro with his family. At the age
of 15 he started to study at the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro and in 1892 he graduated as medical doctor with a thesis on water as vehicle for the propagation of microbes. Inspired by the great work of Louis Pasteur, who had developed the germ theory of disease, four years later he went to Paris to specialize in Bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute,
which gathered the great names of this branch of science of that time.
He was financed by his father-in-law, a wealthy Portuguese merchant. Cruz found the seaport of Santos ravaged by a violent epidemic of bubonic plague that threatened to reach Rio de Janeiro and engaged himself immediately in the combat of this disease. The mayor of Rio de Janeiro authorized
the construction of a plant for manufacturing the serum against the
disease which had been developed at the Pasteur Institute by Alexandre Yersin and
coworkers, and asked the institution for a scientist who could bring to
Brazil this know-how. The Pasteur Institute responded that such a
person was already available in Brazil and he was Dr. Oswaldo Cruz. Thus, on May 25, 1900, the Federal Serotherapy Institute destined to the production of sera and vaccines against
the bubonic plague was created with the Baron Pedro Afonso as Director
General and the young bacteriologist Oswaldo Cruz as Technical
Director. The new Institute was established in the old farm of
Manguinhos at the western shores of Guanabara Bay.
In 1902, Cruz accepted the office of Director General of the new
institute and soon amplified its scope of activities, now no longer
restricted to the production of sera but also dedicated to basic and
applied research and to the building of human resources. In the
following year, Oswaldo Cruz was appointed Director General of Public
Health, a position corresponding to that of a today's Minister of
Health. Using the Federal Serotherapy Institute as technical-scientific
base, he started a quick succession of memorable sanitation campaigns. His first adversary: a series of yellow fever endemics, which had earned Rio de Janeiro the sinister reputation of Foreigners' Grave. Between 1897 and 1906, 4,000 European immigrants had died there from this disease. Cruz
was initially successful in the sanitary campaign against the bubonic
plague, to which end he used obligatory notification of cases,
isolation of sick people, treatment with the sera produced at
Manguinhos and extermination of the rats populating the city. In 1904, a smallpox epidemic
was threatening the capital. In the course of the first five months of
that year, more than 1,800 persons had already been hospitalized. A law
imposing smallpox vaccination of children had existed since 1837 but
had never been put into practice. Therefore, on June 9, 1904, following
a proposal by Oswaldo Cruz, the government presented a bill to the
Congress requesting the reestablishment of obligatory smallpox
vaccination. The extremely rigid and severe provisions of this
instrument terrified the people. Popular opposition against Oswaldo
Cruz increased sharply and opposition newspapers started a violent
campaign against this measure and the federal government in general.
Members of the parliament and labor unions protested. An
Anti-vaccination League was organized. On November 10, the Vaccine Revolt exploded in Rio. Violent confrontations with the police ensued, with strikes, barricades,
and shootings in the streets, as the population rose in protest against
the government. On November 14, the Military Academy adhered to the
revolt but the cadets where dispersed after an intense shooting. The
government declared a state of siege.
On November 16, the uprising was controlled and the obligatory
vaccination was suspended. But in 1908, a violent smallpox epidemic
made the people rush en masse to the vaccination units and Cruz was
vindicated, and his merit recognized. Among
the international scientific community, his prestige was already
uncontested. In 1907, on occasion of the 14th International Congress on
Hygiene and Demography in Berlin, he was awarded with the gold medal in
recognition of the sanitation of Rio de Janeiro. In 1909, Oswaldo Cruz
retired from the position as Director General for Public Health,
dedicating himself exclusively to the Manguinhos Institute, which has
been named after him. From the Institute he organized important
scientific expeditions, which allowed a better knowledge about the
health and life conditions in the interior of the country and
contributed to the colonization of different regions. He eradicated the
urban yellow fever in the State of Pará. His sanitation campaign in the state of Amazonas allowed concluding the construction of the Madeira-Mamoré railroad, which was interrupted due to the great number of deaths of malaria and yellow fever among the workers. In
1913, he was elected a member of the Brazilian Academy of Arts and
Letters. In 1915, due to health problems, he resigned from the
directorship of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute and moved to
Petrópolis, a small city in the mountains near Rio. On August
18, 1916, he was elected mayor of that city and outlined an extensive urbanization project he would not see implemented. In the morning of February 11, 1917, at only 44 years of age, he died of kidney failure. As
a consequence of the short but fruitful life of Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, an
extremely important scientific and health institution was born, which
marked the beginning of experimental medicine in Brazil in many areas.
To this day it exerts a strong influence on Brazilian science,
technology and public health. |