Oswaldo Cruz
Encyclopedia
Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz, better known as Oswaldo Cruz (ozˈvaɫdu ˈkɾuz; August 5, 1872, São Luís 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.
, 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.
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 vaccine
s 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 rat
s populating the city.
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 strike
s, barricade
s, 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.
. 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.
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
state, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
– February 11, 1917, Petrópolis
Petrópolis
Petrópolis , also known as The Imperial City of Brazil, is a town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, about 65 km from the city of Rio de Janeiro....
, Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro (state)
Rio de Janeiro is one of the 27 states of Brazil.Rio de Janeiro has the second largest economy of Brazil behind only São Paulo state.The state of Rio de Janeiro is located within the Brazilian geopolitical region classified as the Southeast...
state) was a Brazilian physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, bacteriologist
Bacteriology
Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...
, epidemiologist
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...
and public health
Public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...
officer and the founder of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute
Instituto Oswaldo Cruz
The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation is a scientific institution for research and development in biomedical sciences located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it is considered one of the world's main public health research institutions. It was founded by Dr...
.
He also occupied the 5th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
Academia Brasileira de Letras
Academia Brasileira de Letras is a Brazilian literary non-profit society established at the end of the 19th century by a group of 40 writers and poets inspired by the Académie Française. The first president, Machado de Assis, declared its foundation on December 15, 1896, with the statutes being...
from 1912 until his death in 1917.
Early years
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 PasteurLouis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...
, who had developed the germ theory of disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
, four years later he went to Paris to specialize in Bacteriology
Bacteriology
Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...
at the Pasteur Institute
Pasteur Institute
The Pasteur Institute is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who made some of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine at the time, including pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax...
, 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.
Work in Brazil
Cruz found the seaport of SantosSantos (São Paulo)
-Sister cities: Shimonoseki, Japan Nagasaki, Japan Funchal, Portugal Trieste, Italy Coimbra, Portugal Ansião, Portugal Arouca, Portugal Ushuaia, Argentina Havana, Cuba Taizhou. China Ningbo. China Constanţa, Romania Ulsan, South Korea Colón, Panama* Cadiz, Spain...
ravaged by a violent epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
of bubonic plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
that threatened to reach Rio de Janeiro and engaged himself immediately in the combat of this disease. The mayor of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
authorized the construction of a plant for manufacturing the serum against the disease which had been developed at the Pasteur Institute by Alexandre Yersin
Alexandre Yersin
Alexandre Emile Jean Yersin was a Swiss and French physician and bacteriologist. He is remembered as the co-discoverer of the bacillus responsible for the bubonic plague or pest, which was later re-named in his honour .Yersin was born in 1863 in Aubonne, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, to a family...
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 vaccine
Vaccine
A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe or its toxins...
s 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
Guanabara Bay
Guanabara Bay is an oceanic bay located in southeastern Brazil in the state of Rio de Janeiro. On its western shore lies the city of Rio de Janeiro, and on its eastern shore the cities of Niterói and São Gonçalo. Four other municipalities surround the bay's shores...
. 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
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
campaigns. His first adversary: a series of yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
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 rat
Rat
Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...
s populating the city.
Smallpox Vaccination Controversy
In 1904, a smallpoxSmallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
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
Vaccine Revolt
The Vaccine Revolt, or Vaccine Rebellion, was a period of civil disorder which occurred in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 10 through 16, 1904.-Antecedents:...
exploded in Rio. Violent confrontations with the police ensued, with strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
s, barricade
Barricade
Barricade, from the French barrique , is any object or structure that creates a barrier or obstacle to control, block passage or force the flow of traffic in the desired direction...
s, 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
State of Siege
State of Siege is a 1972 French film directed by Costa Gavras starring Yves Montand and Renato Salvatori.-Summary:...
. 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.
Later Work
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 ParáPará
Pará is a state in the north of Brazil. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest it also borders Guyana and Suriname, and to the northeast it borders the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Belém.Pará is the most populous state...
. 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
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
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
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
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.