{"id":391577,"date":"2021-04-30T19:26:58","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T22:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=391577"},"modified":"2021-05-06T19:56:33","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T22:56:33","slug":"continual-metamorphosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/continual-metamorphosis\/","title":{"rendered":"Constant metamorphosis"},"content":{"rendered":"

In January 1916, Vital Brazil (1865\u20131950) was in New York, USA, for a scientific conference when he was called to take care of an employee at the Bronx Zoo who had been bitten by a rattlesnake and was not improving with other treatments. The Brazilian physician applied the serum he had brought with him and the man improved in a few hours. Reported in the New York Times<\/em>, the event brought international visibility to the institute that the Minas Gerais physician had run for 15 years.<\/p>\n

The institute was born some years earlier. During the bubonic plague outbreak in Santos in 1899, S\u00e3o Paulo physician Em\u00edlio Ribas (1862\u20131925), director of public health for S\u00e3o Paulo, realized that the outbreak could spread\u2014in fact, soon after this, it arrived in the city of Rio de Janeiro (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP issue<\/em> no. 294<\/em><\/a>). Therefore, an antiplague serum would have to be produced so as not to depend on scant imports. The S\u00e3o Paulo government accepted this argument, bought the Butantan property in the western zone of the capital of S\u00e3o Paulo state, and built a production facility, initially as an annex to the Bacteriological Institute, today the Adolfo Lutz Institute. The laboratory was autonomous by 1901, using the name Soroterapico Institute, and in 1928 it was officially moved to Butantan, as it was called from the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cButantan, like the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, was born out of the inspiration of the French Pasteur Institute and integrates the plan for epidemiological safety for the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, developed by Em\u00edlio Ribas, which includes the Bacteriological Institute and the Vaccinogenic Institute, incorporated into Butantan in 1926,\u201d shares public health physician Nelson Iba\u00f1ez, coordinator of the special laboratory for the History of Science at the institute.<\/p>\n

As a graduate of medicine in Rio de Janeiro, Vital Brazil Mineiro da Campanha participated in the fight against the bubonic plague as an employee of the Bacteriological Institute. After taking on the leadership of Butantan in 1901, as its first director, he increased the production of serums. With the support of Rio physician and zoologist Adolfo Lutz (1855\u20131940), he conducted the first experiments with snake venoms, which he had begun to study four years earlier, producing the first serum vials for the venom of the jararaca (lancehead) and rattlesnake. As a result of deforestation and an increase in farming in the interior of the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, in the early twentieth century, close to 3,000 people died each year in the state from snake bites. He also built a literacy school for children and adults, created public campaigns for field dwellers to protect themselves from venomous animals\u2014which were needed to reduce rodent propagation\u2014and invented a safe wooden box for farmers to send snakes by train and receive serums in return.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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The pioneer in the treatment of snake bites was Portuguese physician Otto Wucherer (1820\u20131874), who lived in Salvador, Bahia, and wrote an article about the topic in the Gazeta M\u00e9dica da Bahia<\/em> (Bahia Medical Gazette) in 1867. Vital Brazil went further and discovered something important: in 1901, he concluded that each serum neutralized the venom of only one taxonomic category of snakes\u2014different from what was confirmed by researchers at the Pasteur Institute in France, who said that the serums could act against any venom. In 1911, he published the book A defesa contra o ofidismo<\/em> (Defending against ophidism), with descriptions of Brazilian snakes and ways to prevent and treat venom poisoning (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP issue<\/em> no. 180<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

His first stint managing the institute ended in 1919, when he was unhappy with the difficulty of keeping and contracting employees due to low salaries. He then accepted an invitation from the Rio de Janeiro government to establish in the state capital the Institute for Health, Serum Therapy, and Veterinary Medicine, soon renamed the Vital Brazil Institute, and years later transformed into a private institution. The doctor returned to S\u00e3o Paulo in 1924 and led Butantan for three more years.<\/p>\n

The directors of the S\u00e3o Paulo institute were not exclusively executives and spent time in the field. Before taking the position of Vital Brazil in 1919, Bahia physician Artur Neiva (1880\u20131943) had participated in a nine-month expedition to the interior regions of the states of Bahia, Pernambuco, Goi\u00e1s, and Piau\u00ed, along with researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, to do surveys of the flora, fauna, diseases, and the living standards of their populations. Para physician Afr\u00e2nio do Amaral (1894\u20131982), who succeeded Neiva, coordinated the first expedition to the island of Queimada Grande in 1920. The island had two snake species, one of which was the jararaca-ilhoa (Golden Lancehead) (Bothrops insularis<\/em>), exclusive to the island. Amaral described this species, which was unknown to researchers, studied its venom, and returned to the island seven times.<\/p>\n

In 1948, then governor of S\u00e3o Paulo Adhemar de Barros (1947\u20131951), decided to intervene in the work of Butantan Institute and reduced the research that had no direct connection to the production of antiophidic serums. The director of the institute, Eduardo Vaz (1947\u20131951), dismissed researchers in the areas of chemistry and endocrinology. The terminations mobilized other scientists from S\u00e3o Paulo and were one of the reasons for the creation of the Brazilian Society for Science Progress\u2014SBPC (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP issue<\/em> no. 269<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>

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