The end of the 1855th century saw the resurgence of a scourge that had plagued humanity from time to time. The first true plague pandemic, in the 1894th century, hit the entire Roman world. The great cycle of the fourteenth century had wiped out a quarter of Europe's population. This third great cycle, initiated in the Chinese province of Yunnan with the Muslim rebellion of 1899 and slowly propagated by the displacement of refugees, reached Guangzhou and Hong Kong in May XNUMX. The ports of southern China began to function as distribution centers for the plague. , which now had among its potential areas of expansion the seaports of the New World. This is how, reaching South America via Paraguay and Argentina, he arrived in the city of Santos in October XNUMX.
But this time, prayers and processions were not the lifeline of the unprotected masses. In 1894, the etiological agent had been discovered in Hong Kong, first by the Swiss researcher Alexandre Yersin, from the Pasteur Institute, who named it Pasteurella pestis (today Yersinia pestis) in honor of the Master, and shortly afterwards by the Japanese Shibasaburo Kitasato, disciple of Robert Koch. The same Yersin, together with his collaborator Henri Carré and also the Russian doctor WM Haffkine, had already prepared the first vaccines which, although they needed improvement, emerged as prophylactic weapons.
It was in this emergency that the federal government appointed Oswaldo Cruz, who had recently arrived on a long-term internship in Paris, mainly at the Pasteur Institute, to, together with Adolpho Lutz and Vital Brazil, appointed by the government of São Paulo, verify the real etiology of the Santos epidemic. Officially confirmed that "the prevailing disease in Santos is the bubonic plague", the health authorities decided to establish laboratories for the production of vaccine and serum against the plague: Instituto Butantan, in São Paulo, and the Instituto Seroterapico Municipal in Rio de Janeiro.
The Serotherapy Institute was the result of a suggestion made by Barão de Pedro Affonso - a surgeon of recognized competence, founder of Instituto Vacínico, the first laboratory to produce smallpox vaccine in the country - to the Mayor of the Federal District, Cesário Alvim, who ceded the Farm of Manguinhos, conveniently located away from the urban centre. The Baron intended to hire a specialist from the Pasteur Institute for the technical direction, but on the recommendation of Émile Roux he offered the position to Oswaldo Cruz.
With the list of material to be acquired, organized by the new technical director, the Baron left for Europe. In Paris he managed to hire only the veterinarian Henri Carré, Yersin's collaborator in the production of the first anti-plague vaccine; is that the Brazilian government had only authorized him to offer unattractive contracts in addition to being inoperative, for a maximum period of six months.
Once the laboratories were installed, work began, without any ceremony, on May 25, 1900, under the weight of an enormous task to be fulfilled, in addition to the administrative and technical directors, by three professionals - Colonel-Doctor Ismael da Rocha, bacteriologist from the Army Health Service; physician Henrique de Figueiredo Vasconcellos, assistant at the Vaccine Institute; and veterinarian H. Carré - and a medical student, Ezequiel Caetano Dias. However, the Municipality soon found itself unable to continue maintaining the new institution, which was transferred to the Public Health Directorate of the Ministry of Justice and Interior Affairs, and officially opened on July 23 as the Federal Serotherapy Institute.
Shortly after, the initial team was short of two components: Ismael da Rocha, called back to the Army laboratory, and Carré, who was returning to France with health problems, according to some, or fear of yellow fever, according to others. But the competence of the rest was already proven, and it was deemed necessary only to hire a medical student, Antônio Cardoso Fontes, and some assistants.
None of the remaining five had any experience with a plague vaccine or serum. Only Oswaldo Cruz had visited the serum section of the Pasteur Institute, but his interest was in the preparation of diphtheria antitoxin. Both in relation to the vaccine and the serum, the data available in the scarce literature lacked precise details that would allow its preparation outside the producing laboratories.
Using initially the bacillus he had isolated in Santos and improving the known methods, Oswaldo Cruz managed to get the newly created Institute to produce, just six months after its foundation, a vaccine and a serum, which would soon be recognized internationally as excellent (according to Émile Roux ) and among the most effective then existing (according to W. Kolle and R. Otto, from the Institute of Infectious Diseases in Berlin - director Robert Koch). The "state of the art" in this regard was exposed in an extensive article in Brazil-Medico in 1901, where "the arguments and facts that guided the Institute in choosing the process it adapted", the manufacturing method, the vaccination technique, the advantages of the vaccine and the care that should accompany its application.
However, the first publication of the new Institute, also in Brazil-Medico of 1901, has nothing to do with the plague, entitled "Contribution to the study of culicids in Rio de Janeiro, by Dr. Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz (work of the Instituto of Manguinhos)". It reveals the author's nonconformity with the idea of an institution merely destined for the manufacture of serums and vaccines. Less than three years ago (November 1898) the Italians Amico Bignami, Giovanni Battista Grassi and Giuseppe Bastianelli had demonstrated the transmission of malaria by anopheline mosquitoes, the Institute should therefore, in addition to the absorbing commitment it had assumed, take upon itself the task of recognizing the Brazilian representatives of this zoological group. Anopheles lutzi, a new species described in this work, is now known to occur from Amazonas to Rio Grande do Sul, and also in Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. This publication inaugurated the study of Brazilian medical entomology by national researchers, followed by three others, until 1907. All of them appear as works of the self-styled "Instituto de Manguinhos". In the meantime, five more contributions are published by Arthur Neiva , Carlos Chagas and Antônio Peryassú on culicids in Brazil, laying the foundations for a highly productive school of entomologists and acarologists that would develop to the present day.
The intention to make the Institute an original scientific research center that would support the applied activities is reflected in Oswaldo Cruz's publications. With the exception of two - "A vaccinação anti-pestosa" (1901) and "Dos accidentes em sorotherapia" (1902), subjects inherent to the official purpose of the institution and which appear as works of the "Instituto Sôrotherapico Federal (Instituto de Manguinhos)", all the others refer only to "Instituto de Manguinhos". Even an article on "Pest", with a broad scope (epidemiology, microbiology, transmission, symptomatology, pathological anatomy, diagnosis, treatment and prophylaxis), not dealing specifically with sera and vaccines, is "Work of the Instituto de Manguinhos". This reference continues to appear even in publications after the name change to Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.
Even during the Baron's administration as administrative director (a post he resigned in December 1902), medical students began to flock to the Institute, seeking internships or guidance for their theses, then indispensable for graduation. Other research topics were rapidly being adopted in several domains: hematology, bacteriology, protozoology, virology, immunology and helminthology. A radical change then began in the academic landscape of Rio de Janeiro: instead of the usual compilations based on current literature, monographs based on original research that only exceptionally deal with the plague appear in an increasing number. Names that would illustrate national biomedical science had their training perfected and directed under the guidance of Oswaldo Cruz at the "Instituto de Manguinhos". Among others, Carlos Chagas, Ezequiel Dias, Antônio Cardoso Fontes, Eduardo Rabello, Paulo Parreiras Horta, Henrique de Beaurepaire Aragão, Affonso MacDowell, Henrique da Rocha Lima, Raul de Almeida Magalhães, Arthur Neiva, Antônio Gonçalves Peryassú, José Gomes de Faria, Alcides Godoy , Arthur Moses to mention only the authors of some of the 23 theses produced from 1901 to 1910. The fact that this list includes not only names who joined the Institute's research staff, but also others who became prominent outside of it. in its specialties, it shows the influence of the Institute in the scientific renewal of the country.
In addition to theses, during this same phase, the Institute produces 120 original publications in national journals (the vast majority in Brazil-Medico) and in highly selective international journals, such as Centralblatt für Bakteriologie, Biologischen Zentralblatt, Archiv für Protistenkunde, Archiv für Schiffs und Tropen -Hygiene, Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten, Münchener Medizinische, Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie and Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique. At that time, the list of scientific journals subscribed to the Institute's Library surpassed 420 titles.
Until 1907, when the Institute was awarded the great gold medal at the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, in Berlin, its scientific production, published in the aforementioned periodicals, resulted from the work of young researchers who had never attended another research center. Only after that event, renowned scientists such as Stanislas von Prowazek, Gustav Giemsa and Max Hartmann expressed an interest in working in the Manguinhos laboratories, staying here for a long time collaborating in studies on smallpox, cytology, antidiphtheria serum, spirochetosis, ciliates, amoebas, trichonymphs, hemogregarines and other protozoa.
The impact of the Institute's award was decisive in other respects. The project that transformed the Federal Serotherapy Institute into an "Institute of Experimental Pathology", dormant for a long time in Congress, was quickly approved and sanctioned by President Affonso Penna, as Decree n° 1812, on December 12, 1907. Government of the respective regiment, on March 19, 1908, the name "Instituto Oswaldo Cruz" was officially adopted.
Inaugurated in 1908, the Course of Application was the first Brazilian graduate school, a true innovation in the national scientific panorama. It taught and worked for two years on research and experimentation methods in microscopy, microbiology, immunology, physics and biological chemistry, and parasitology sensu lato.
This is how the Instituto Seroterapico formed a small group that quickly absorbed and expanded the scientific and technological knowledge necessary for the company's success. In possession of this knowledge, a mediocre structure would be limited to a routine productivity, of great social utility but confined to its immediate purpose. By chance, however, someone at the head of the enterprise was prepared to understand that this successful scientific and technological beginning could be expanded to encompass other fields of national pathology. With a scientific development level with the highest standards of the time, associated with the transmission of knowledge through the Application Course and the production of various prophylactic, therapeutic and diagnostic agents, already in 1909 the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz had assumed, in an inverse sequence, the tasks that today characterize the modern University: teaching, research and extension. And, in order to better ensure the dissemination of the knowledge generated in its laboratories, from 1909 onwards, it published the "Memories of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute".
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