13 Facts About Oswaldo Cruz

Oswaldo Cruz occupied the fifth chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1912 until his death in 1917.

Oswaldo Goncalves Cruz was born on August 5,1872, in Sao Luis do Paraitinga, a small city in Sao Paulo Province, to the physician Bento Goncalvez Cruz and Amalia Bulhoes Cruz.

Oswaldo Cruz was financed by his father-in-law, a wealthy Portuguese merchant.

Oswaldo Cruz asked the institution for a scientist who could bring this know-how to Brazil.

In 1902, Oswaldo Cruz accepted the office of director general of the institute and soon expanded the scope of its activities, now no longer restricted to the production of sera but dedicated to basic and applied research and to the building of human resources.

Oswaldo Cruz's first challenge was a series of yellow fever endemics, which had earned Rio de Janeiro the sinister reputation of 'Foreigners' Grave'.

Oswaldo Cruz pursued the new technique of eradicating mosquitoes and their breeding grounds, fumigating houses, and isolation of the ill.

Oswaldo 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.

Oswaldo Cruz was not successful in implementing a widespread vaccination against smallpox, due to popular resistance to it.

In 1907, on occasion of the 14th International Congress on Hygiene and Demography in Berlin, Oswaldo Cruz was awarded with the gold medal in recognition of the sanitation of Rio de Janeiro.

Oswaldo Cruz eradicated urban yellow fever in the state of Para.

In 1913, Oswaldo Cruz 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 Petropolis, a small city in the mountains near Rio.