Vital Brazil
Encyclopedia
Campanha
Campanha is a town in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. In 2004 its population was estimated at 15,456 inhabitants. The town is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Campanha....
, Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
, 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...
– May 8, 1950) 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...
, biomedical scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
and immunologist
Immunology
Immunology is a broad branch of biomedical science that covers the study of all aspects of the immune system in all organisms. It deals with the physiological functioning of the immune system in states of both health and diseases; malfunctions of the immune system in immunological disorders ; the...
, internationally renowned for the discovery of the polyvalent anti-ophidic serum
Antivenin
Antivenom is a biological product used in the treatment of venomous bites or stings. Antivenom is created by milking venom from the desired snake, spider or insect. The venom is then diluted and injected into a horse, sheep or goat...
used to treat bites of venomous snake
Snake
Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...
s of the Crotalus
Crotalus
Crotalus is a genus of venomous pit vipers found only in the Americas from southern Canada to northern Argentina. The name is derived from the Greek word krotalon, which means "rattle" or "castanet", and refers to the rattle on the end of the tail which makes this group so distinctive...
, Bothrops
Bothrops
Bothrops is a genus of venomous pitvipers found in Central and South America. The generic name is derived from the Greek words bothros and ops that mean "pit" and "eye" or "face"; an allusion to the heat-sensitive loreal pit organs. Members of this genus are responsible for more human deaths in the...
and Elaps genera. He went on to be also the first to develop anti-scorpion and anti-spider serums. He was the founder of the Butantan Institute
Instituto Butantan
Instituto Butantan is a Brazilian biomedical research center affiliated to the São Paulo State Secretary of Health. It is located near the campus of the University of São Paulo, in the city of the same name.-History:...
, a research center located in São Paulo, which was the first in the world dedicated exclusively to basic and applied toxicology
Toxicology
Toxicology is a branch of biology, chemistry, and medicine concerned with the study of the adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms...
, the science of venomous animals.
Life
He graduated in Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
in 1891, in 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...
, working as a technical assistant in the chair of Physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
in order to pay for his tuition and living expenses. After graduating, he began work in 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...
, initially as a sanitary inspector in São Paulo (1892–1895), where he acquired experience in the prevalent 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...
diseases of the time (smallpox
Smallpox
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"...
, typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
, 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....
and cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
), and then as a private practitioner in the city of Botucatu
Botucatu
Botucatu is a city in the southeastern region of Brazil and is located 224.8 km from São Paulo, the Capital of the State of São Paulo. The city has a population of about 127,370 inhabitants within a of 1,486.4 square kilometers, on top of a plateau . Botucatu became a township in .The...
, from 1895 to 1896.
Vital Brazil was attracted by medical research in the growing fields of bacteriology
Bacteriology
Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...
, virology
Virology
Virology is the study of viruses and virus-like agents: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit cells for virus reproduction, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy...
and immunology
Immunology
Immunology is a broad branch of biomedical science that covers the study of all aspects of the immune system in all organisms. It deals with the physiological functioning of the immune system in states of both health and diseases; malfunctions of the immune system in immunological disorders ; the...
at the end of the 19th century, which were being fueled by the great discoveries in Europe, by Louis Pasteur
Louis 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...
, Robert Koch
Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was a German physician. He became famous for isolating Bacillus anthracis , the Tuberculosis bacillus and the Vibrio cholerae and for his development of Koch's postulates....
, Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich was a German scientist in the fields of hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy, and Nobel laureate. He is noted for curing syphilis and for his research in autoimmunity, calling it "horror autotoxicus"...
and many others. He therefore returned to São Paulo in 1897 and accepted a position in the Instituto Bacteriológico de São Paulo (Bacteriological Institute of São Paulo), under direction of the great Brazilian pathologist
Pathology
Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
and 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...
Adolfo Lutz
Adolfo Lutz
Adolfo Lutz was a Brazilian physician, 1855-1940, father of tropical medicine and medical zoology in Brazil, and a pioneer epidemiologist and researcher in infectious diseases....
. There, he worked on the preparation of sera against several diseases, particularly 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...
, of which he fell gravely ill, fortunately surviving it.
Due to his outstanding work, the government of São Paulo founded a new Serum Therapy Institute in 1901 and gave its directorship to Vital Brazil. He also founded the Institute of Hygiene, Serum Therapy and Veterinary Medicine in the city of Niterói
Niterói
Niterói is a municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro, southeast region of Brazil. It has an estimated population of 487,327 inhabitants and an area of ², being the sixth most populous city in the state and the highest Human Development Index. Integrates the Metropolitan Region of Rio de...
, in 1919.
Vital Brazil carried out scientific travels to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in 1904 and 1914 and to 1925 to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He continued working at the Butantan Institute for several decades until his retirement in 1919. He died on May 8, 1950, celebrated as one of the most important Brazilian scientists ever.
Work
The new São Paulo Institute was built in a section of the city named Butantan, at the time a far-away place, near the Pinheiros river, a swampy, sparsely inhabited area. Under Vital Brazil, it soon became an energetic and exemplary research center in vaccines and sera of all kinds, which were produced locally for the prophylaxis and treatment of tetanusTetanus
Tetanus is a medical condition characterized by a prolonged contraction of skeletal muscle fibers. The primary symptoms are caused by tetanospasmin, a neurotoxin produced by the Gram-positive, rod-shaped, obligate anaerobic bacterium Clostridium tetani...
, diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
, 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....
, smallpox
Smallpox
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"...
and several zoonoses (diseases transmitted to humans by animals), such as the dreaded hydrophobia
Hydrophobia
Hydrophobia or hydrophobe may refer to:* Rabies, especially a set of symptoms of the later stages of an infection, in which the victim has difficulty swallowing, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench his or her thirst....
. The Institute came to be well known by his original nickname, the Butantan Institute, and is still active today.
Vital Brazil was convinced since his early work at Butantan that envenomations (poisoning by accidents with venomous animals, such as snake
Snake
Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...
s, scorpion
Scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arthropod animals of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping claws and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger...
s, spider
Spider
Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...
s and batrachia, then the cause of thousands of deaths in enormous rural Brazil, which teemed with such tropical beasts) could be fought with antisera, i.e., antibodies
Antibody
An antibody, also known as an immunoglobulin, is a large Y-shaped protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as bacteria and viruses. The antibody recognizes a unique part of the foreign target, termed an antigen...
specifically produced for venoms which were proteins or long-chain peptides. A French immunologist, Albert Calmette
Albert Calmette
Léon Charles Albert Calmette ForMemRS was a French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist, and an important officer of the Pasteur Institute. He discovered the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, an attenuated form of Mycobacterium used in the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis...
(1863–1933) had demonstrated this for the first time in 1892, by developing a monovalent serum to treat bites by the Indian cobra
Cobra
Cobra is a venomous snake belonging to the family Elapidae. However, not all snakes commonly referred to as cobras are of the same genus, or even of the same family. The name is short for cobra capo or capa Snake, which is Portuguese for "snake with hood", or "hood-snake"...
(Naja tripudians).
Vital Brazil thus began a series of experimental investigations, and in 1901 he was able to prove that monovalent sera against the Asiatic species were ineffective against South American snakes, and proceeded to develop his first monovalent sera against the most common envenomations in Brazil, those produced by the Bothrops, Crotalus and Elaps genera (represented respectively by the jararaca
Jararaca
Jararaca may refer to:* Bothrops jararaca, a venomous pitviper found in South America* Bothrops neuwiedi, known as jararaca pintada, a venomous pitviper found in South America...
snake
Snake
Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...
, the rattlesnake
Rattlesnake
Rattlesnakes are a group of venomous snakes of the genera Crotalus and Sistrurus of the subfamily Crotalinae . There are 32 known species of rattlesnake, with between 65-70 subspecies, all native to the Americas, ranging from southern Alberta and southern British Columbia in Canada to Central...
, and the coral snake
Coral snake
The coral snakes are a large group of elapid snakes that can be subdivided into two distinct groups, Old World coral snakes and New World coral snakes...
). He found several clinical and biochemical similarities between bothropic and crotalic envonomations and so he was the first to achieve a polyvalent serum, i.e., simultaneously effective against both species, which represented a triumph over the stark mortality
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
caused by these species in North, Central and South America. In a few decades, this mortality, which was higher than 25% to 20% of bitten people, fell to less than 2%.
Applying the same techniques (which involved gradual immunization
Immunization
Immunization, or immunisation, is the process by which an individual's immune system becomes fortified against an agent ....
of horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s and sheep by administering small doses of venoms, and then extracting, purifying and freeze-drying the antibody portion from the blood of injected animals), Vital Brazil and his coworkers were able to discover the first sera against two species of scorpion
Scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arthropod animals of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping claws and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger...
s' (1908) and spider
Spider
Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...
s' (1925) venoms. In the USA, Vital Brazil's name made the headlines when he used his serum to save the life of a worker in the Bronx Zoo
Bronx Zoo
The Bronx Zoo is located in the Bronx borough of New York City, within Bronx Park. It is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, comprising of park lands and naturalistic habitats, through which the Bronx River flows....
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
who was bitten by a rattlesnake.
Most important of all, the Butantan Institute became a fertile school for breeding a new generation of Brazilian biochemists, physiologists and pathologists, such as José Moura Gonçalves
José Moura Gonçalves
José Moura Gonçalves , Brazilian physician, biomedical scientist, biochemist and educator, one of the pioneers of biochemistry in the country....
, Carlos Ribeiro Diniz, Gastão Rosenfeld
Gastão Rosenfeld
Gastão Rosenfeld , was a Brazilian physician and biomedical scientist, one of the co-discoverers of bradykinin, together with Maurício Rocha e Silva and Wilson Teixeira Beraldo, in 1949....
, Wilson Teixeira Beraldo
Wilson Teixeira Beraldo
Wilson Teixeira Beraldo was a Brazilian physician and physiologist, a co-discoverer of bradykinin....
and Maurício Rocha e Silva
Maurício Rocha e Silva
Maurício Oscar da Rocha e Silva was a Brazilian physician, biomedical scientist and pharmacologist...
, who went on to found a growing number of schools, departments and research laboratories in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, giving a great impetus to the development of medical and biological research and teaching in Brazil in the second half of the 20th century.
According to Bernardo Houssay
Bernardo Houssay
-External links:* * . WhoNamedIt.* . Nobel Foundation....
, who wrote a well-cited biography of Vital Brazil in 1966, his contributions went further than herpetology
Herpetology
Herpetology is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians and reptiles...
:
"Vital Brazil and his collaborators have studied several actions of the venoms, (such as) coagulant
Coagulant
Coagulant can refer to:* flocculation* coagulation agent...
, anticoagulant
Anticoagulant
An anticoagulant is a substance that prevents coagulation of blood. A group of pharmaceuticals called anticoagulants can be used in vivo as a medication for thrombotic disorders. Some anticoagulants are used in medical equipment, such as test tubes, blood transfusion bags, and renal dialysis...
, hemolytic
Hemolysis
Hemolysis —from the Greek meaning "blood" and meaning a "loosing", "setting free" or "releasing"—is the rupturing of erythrocytes and the release of their contents into surrounding fluid...
, agglutinant
Agglutinin
An agglutinin is a substance that causes particles to coagulate to form a thickened mass . Agglutinins can be antibodies that cause antigens to aggregate by binding to the antigen-binding sites of antibodies. Agglutinins can also be any substance other than antibodies such as sugar-binding...
, cytotoxic, proteolytic
Proteolysis
Proteolysis is the directed degradation of proteins by cellular enzymes called proteases or by intramolecular digestion.-Purposes:Proteolysis is used by the cell for several purposes...
, etc. (...) The (animal) poisons contain numerous enzyme
Enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...
s which have been isolated and studied with interest in all parts since they explain many of the symptoms and constitute interesting biochemical reagents, Vital Brazil studied also the ophiophagous
Ophiophagy
Ophiophagy is a specialized form of feeding or alimentary behavior of animals which hunt and eat snakes. There are ophiophagous mammals , birds , lizards , and even other snakes, such as the Central and South American mussuranas and...
serpents, such as the mussurana
Mussurana
The mussurana or musurana are six species of oviparous colubrid snakes belonging to the genus Clelia. They are distributed from Guatemala to Brazil. They specialize in ophiophagy, i.e., they attack and eat other snakes...
, the ophiophagous mammals, such as the skunk
Skunk
Skunks are mammals best known for their ability to secrete a liquid with a strong, foul odor. General appearance varies from species to species, from black-and-white to brown or cream colored. Skunks belong to the family Mephitidae and to the order Carnivora...
-like Conepatus chilensis and others, the ophiophagous birds and certain spiders. (...) His book, La défense contre l’ophidisme published in French in 1914, attained international repercussion with three editions."
External links
- Instituto Vital Brazil Website.
- Houssay, B.A. Transcendence of Vital Brazil´s Work. Memórias do Instituto Butantan, São Paulo, v. 33, p. xiii-xvi, 1966.
- Home page of the Instituto ButantanInstituto ButantanInstituto Butantan is a Brazilian biomedical research center affiliated to the São Paulo State Secretary of Health. It is located near the campus of the University of São Paulo, in the city of the same name.-History:...
] - Hawgood BJ. Pioneers of anti-venomous serotherapy: Dr Vital Brazil (1865-1950). Toxicon. 1992 May-Jun;30(5-6):573-9.
- Biblioteca Virtual Vital Brazil (In Portuguese).