In the Times of the Abandoned Farmhouse
Introduction
In 1899, Paraguay and Portugal suffered an epidemic outbreak of bubonic plague, constituting a serious threat to Brazil, due to the intensely exploited commercial shipping routes proceeding from those countries. In October of that year, the plague finally reached the Brazilian port of Santos, forcing Brazilian sanitary authorities to immediately begin planning the construction of facilities for producing antiserum to combat the plague because of the difficulties in obtaining it from abroad. In Rio de Janeiro, an old farm, called Manguinhos, was chosen as the site. Strategically located at a safe distance from the bustle of the city, it became, after some work renovating and adapting its small abandoned farmhouse, the Instituto Soroter pico Federal 1, embryo of the future and majestic laboratory of Manguinhos, until today a Brazilian reference for scientific and technological research in public health.
At the beginning of the 20th century, many elements of the Anglo Saxon work ethic needed for scientific experimentation, including rigorous discipline, perseverance, and self-denial deeply contrasted with the adventurous mentality that governed Brazilian social and cultural life, forged by the practice of obtaining fast results without sacrifices. So, to guarantee the recognition of the principal scientific centers of the civilized world of a lost laboratory below the equator, Brazilian scientists had to overcome strong cultural differences existing between Iberian values and the Anglo-Saxon world where science flourished. The immediate goal of establishing their facilities as an authorized representative of international science required competence in the rigorous pasteurian methods which was the first step towards the more ambitious objective of surpassing the barrier of mere intermediation to become also a productive center of scientific truths. This required a practical repertoire of modes and abilities based on severity and precision, nonexistent qualities in the Brazilian way of life, which was based on the accentuation of the affective, of the irrational, and of the passional, all emblematic attributes of Portuguese colonization. As an operative discourse emerged from the interior of the laboratory, based on situations where action proliferated and perspiration was a distinctive sign of nobility, more than a new science and a new scientists community was being created but indeed a new society. Our investigation consists of examining the everyday life in that abandoned farmhouse improvised as a laboratory for the production of bubonic plague antiserum, using scenes of scientists daily work as a valuable instrument to surprise them in action. Our objective is to explore the cultural frontiers between the Iberian and Anglo-Saxon worlds, delineated by the adoption of Pasteurian scientific methodology into Brazilian society, inspired by the extraordinary analysis of S‚rgio Buarque de Holanda, published in his seminal book about Brazilian cultural formation, Ra¡zes do Brasil 2, from 1936 [HOLANDA,1987].
Scene 1
In 1900, having just arrived after a three year stay at the Institut Pasteur, Oswaldo Cruz was nominated the head of the Instituto Soroter pico Federal, and would have a meteoric career, becoming, in 1903, the most important sanitary authority in Brazil as head of the Brazilian Public Health Office. With his authority and credentials established, Oswaldo Cruz was able to translate interests dealing with the combat of bubonic plague, smallpox and yellow fever, into much larger ones such as the increase of international prestige for the country and the redemption of public health services in Rio de Janeiro [LATOUR,1987:117], building an heroic reputation turned later into a national myth of dedication to the foundation and development of science in Brazil. The following scene is from the very origins of the Instituto Soroter pico Federal, extracted from a dialogue between Oswaldo Cruz and Ezequiel Dias, a medical student, narrated by the latter, after Oswaldo had extended him an offer to become a member of the minute scientific staff hired for the production of antiserum which they would soon begin to fabricate.
Are you ready to work as many hours a day as necessary to fulfill your obligations without any fixed schedule?
Yes, Sir.
Now, a last question to which I attribute great importance: Do you know anything about bacteriology?
The young student had a moment of doubt: on one side, the fascination for an unexpected position of aiding a true scientist, besides the salary he would earn; on the other side, his conscience that compelled him to tell the truth. He opted for this choice though inwardly he fell into a crisis of moral dejectedness.
No, Sir.
Oh, excellent, this is one of the main requirements for the job, replied Cruz [DIAS,1922:110].
When questioning his disposition for working hard, Oswaldo Cruz was challenging the young student to overcome, through effort and perseverance, common characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon work ethic, old bureaucratic postures established since colonial times, and especially reinforced by the State apparatus brought by D. Jo o VI, in his escape to Brazil, with the entire Portuguese court at the beginning of the 19th century. Cruz wasn t looking for a public employee worried only in maintaining his position in the State bureaucracy but, to the contrary, he needed a disciplined and dedicated worker. Discipline and dedication were qualities that clearly contrasted with the adventurous mentality that reigned over the Portuguese Empire, forged on the obtainment of fast results without great sacrifice. A true scientist had to carry within himself the notion of fulfilling his obligations without regard for the time, without lassitude, without tepidness, and without indifference, a word to which S‚rgio Buarque de Holanda dedicates special attention in Ra¡zes do Brasil, clearly pointing to the difficulties which were to be confronted:
No rigor, no method, no foresight, always this significant abandonment that expresses the word indifference - a word that writer Aubrey Bell considered so typically Portuguese as longing and that, in his understanding, implies less a lack of energy than an intimate conviction that it is not worth the effort … [HOLANDA,1987:76].
Yes, it was worth the effort to take advantage of the chance for practicing science in Brazil but in order to do so new attitudes were indispensable, beginning with an utilitarian regulation of time, more committed to production and results. The world of science began to emerge, though as a world apart, as an island of new values where new precepts had to be established in opposition to the vices of lassitude belonging to a society just freed from slavery. This world apart was confirmed by Oswaldo Cruz with his preference for candidates absolutely ignorant of bacteriology. Knowing would be knowing in the old way, the breaking with the past being the basic condition for penetrating microbial mysteries. To be admitted to that laboratory, it was a necessary condition to be void of experience, without any antecedents, or any vestiges of the old knowledge. Within this overriding desire for discarding the past resided the essence of local representation of modern civilized centers while, evidencing that the emergence of Brazilian science demanded necessarily a new Brazilian society.
Scene 2 What were the initiating mysteries of bacteriology kept in that small temple of science? What was hidden in Manguinhos that no old knowledge would be capable of revealing? Without pretending to exhaust the subject we would suggest that, that new science required a practical repertoire of gestures and abilities based on rigor, precision and on a nonexistent discipline in Brazilian life which was distinguished by the accentuation of the affective, the irrational, the passional, and of an affected and sugary softness [HOLANDA,1987:31]. These attributes of Brazilian society, a part of the colonial inheritance, were characterized by S‚rgio Buarque de Holanda when describing a phenomenon that can be easily related to this affected softness:
The diminutive ending inho is used to make us more intimate with people or objects and, at the same time, to give them importance. It is the way to make them more accessible to the senses and also of approximating them to the heart [HOLANDA,1987:108].
With the adoption of this linguistic and cultural approach, it s easy to understand why the Instituto Soroter pico Federal has been referred to, since its very foundation, by the denomination of Instituto de Manguinhos. With the very act of naming, the world of affected and sugary softness would resist the rigor and coldness of scientific rationality. The description of those beginnings, narrated by Henrique Vasconcellos, another of the pioneers, shows quite clearly the clash between laxity and the unsugary rudeness of the obsession for accuracy:
Oswaldo, having decided to dose the vaccine through weighing and as the Institute didn’t possess a precision balance, brought one of his own, with long arms and sensitive to 0.1 mg that oscillated… infinitely before stopping. It was really martyrdom to weigh with such a balance, principally because Oswaldo demanded double weighing. When Oswaldo spoke of weighing, Fontes and Ezequiel became stupefied and apprehensive until the victim had been chosen, who then proceeded heroically to martyrdom without the slightest recrimination. With effect, during one hour, at minimum, one of them would sit there before the balance, which oscillated eternally… The weighing was only accepted after having been verified by Oswaldo when it was something of greater responsibility. At this time, the great master was of an immeasurable exigency [VASCONCELLOS, 1922:181-182].
If great time was necessary, though it be an eternity, there was no backing away from precision. If the method demanded sacrifice, or a victim, one proceeded stoically along the via Cruces. If the weight had to be exact it didn t matter that the scales oscillated infinitely, only that the weighing was repeated. The only measurement which was allowed to be unadjusted was the exigency for exact measurements. Immensurability was part of the plan to convert the new pupils, to whom no truce would be given until they had proven their pertinence to that world set apart. He not only incarnated the role of exigent master , but fundamentally, Oswaldo Cruz carried out the crucial mission of faithfully representing modern civilized centers’ inside the laboratory, zealously caring for all the procedures so that the results of such intense and dedicated labor could be sanctioned by foreign scientific centers. In this way, his laboratory could be approved as an authorized representative of international science. For such, the first proviso would be to prove competence in laboratory procedures in order to one day dream of going beyond the barrier of mere intermediation to become a center of scientific truths. It was still a question of being aligned with the humble vassals of European science to firstly demonstrate that in Brazil all necessary precautions were integrally carried out, without which it would not be possible to affirm the facts of science. After all, how many ingenuous and illuded Latinos had been scorned for not following the catechism of procedural techniques? Among various precedents, one of the most celebrated was that of Domingos Freire, a Brazilian doctor, who in 1885 announced to the world cryptococcus xantogenicus as being the etiological agent of yellow fever, against which he even produced a vaccine, administered to 3,000 people, compiling statistical results that supposedly proved its effectiveness. Domingos Freire sought to be faithful to Koch s and Pasteur s lessons and for this same reason called the international community’s attention. His work was analyzed by the British bacteriologists Sutton and Harrison, by the French Le Dantec of the Pasteur Institute and by the American George Sternberg, all of whom were unanimous in refuting Domingos Freire s results specifically for disobedience to the precepts of bacteriology techniques [BENCHIMOL,1995]. Oswaldo Cruz wanted to avoid the re-edition of the rejection of Domingos Freire s work, and so totally dedicated himself to conquer the complete dominion of the savoir- faire needed to manage a scientific laboratory.
Scene 3
The next scene, narrated by Henrique Vasconcellos, describes the manipulation of a guinea pig by himself and Oswaldo Cruz.
I won t defraud myself of the wish to refer here to what happened on occasion of the first inoculation of a guinea pig. (…) On that occasion, Oswaldo Cruz had only 3 auxiliaries myself, already a doctor, and two medical students, Antonio Fontes and Ezequiel Dias, we being entirely ignorant of bacteriology. Oswaldo made it a point that his staff should have this good quality, as he said, because in this way he would educate us and would prepare us to his volition and in his own manner.
The crystallizer readied, the animal was placed in its interior and taken to the room where the inoculation would be administered.
I picked up the apparatus with which to hold the guinea pig and took it with me. Upon seeing me Oswaldo asked me:
What is that for?
To hold down the guinea pig, I answered.
But it s not necessary, the guinea pig will be held by hand.
By hand? By whom? I asked.
By you.
By me?
Yes, but in case you don’t want to I ll hold it and you inject the serum, he retorted, fixing his gaze upon me.
Show me how to hold the animal and I ll be ready, I told him, although I felt, I confess, a certain dread….
Really, Oswaldo showed me how to hold the animal: I did as he had taught and he picked up the syringe, already full of the culture, and injected it. We were both affected, me principally; our breathing was short and hurried. After having released the animal inside the crystallizer, I breathed deeply; I had just finished taking a great burden off myself. I looked at Oswaldo, who was laughing, though his face was covered with perspiration as was mine … when he asked me if the fear had passed …
On many, many occasions, while conversing about the primordials of the Institute, recollecting the past, we would always refer to this incident without forgetting any of the sensations or details, which would make us laugh congenially [VASCONCELLOS,1922:178-179].
From the very beginning of the scene, the recurrent theme of ignorance appears as an element of extreme importance for the initiation of the neophytes, but the great star of the dialogue are the hands of the researcher. The daily chores required an excellence of manual craftsmanship, the dominance of which formed an important part of the gestures indispensable to the practice of bacteriology. In that world apart, the flowers of erudite discourses typical to the professors of the Rio de Janeiro Medical School wilted, and in their place flowered operative discourse where actions proliferated and where sweat upon the face was a distinctive sign of nobility. Values of disciplined effort were accentuated as the way to unveil Nature s mysteries, which appeared within that scene as a moving exaltation to manual labor. Local science was building a new culture, unethical compared to the cultural roots of the old Portuguese metropolis, as observed, once again, by the subtlety of S‚rgio Buarque de Holanda: Action upon things, upon the material universe, implies submission to an external object, acceptance of a law alien to the individual. God does not demand it, it does not increase His glory nor does it increase our own dignity. To the contrary, you could say that it is prejudicial and demeaning to our dignity. Manual and mechanic labor seek an objective exterior to man intent upon perfecting something other than himself. It is therefore comprehensible that the modern religion of work and the appreciation of utilitarian activity has never been naturalized among Hispanic people. A worthy idleness always seemed more excellent, and even more ennobling to a good Portuguese or Spaniard, than the insane fight for the bread of each day [HOLANDA, 1987:10].3 Now it s possible to understand that the country that had begun to believe in microbes had to have a clean slate within the laboratory, creating there an experimental world of new social relationships and of a new way of valorizing work, as indicated from reading a magazine of that time: Today, the battle in name of the great truths is waged not from the heights of cathedras but on the vast fields of experimentation. It s work… [A Lanterna, 15/11/1903].
The times of the abandoned farmhouse, as briefly described here as a story composed of scenes and narratives, tries to help make more or less plausible relationships and distinctions [LAW, 1998]. For example, rendering less plausible the distinctions explicitly established by the scientists-narrators between the rigors of scientific objectivity and the passions of human subjectivity with its retinue of fears, shortcomings, desires, self-denial, idolatries and heroics. Or, to the contrary, rendering more plausible the relationships between culture and science when, inspired by S‚rgio Buarque de Holanda, we examine old colonial habits grating upon the edges of Anglo-Saxon culture within the laboratory. A story about who or what should be included and in what way [LAW, 1998]. Especially because it includes the materiality of science, to the extent that it s a narration of science in action, observed through the daily activity of constructing and consolidating a laboratory. A materiality performed in a universe of artifacts - syringes, scales, instruments, etc. in the quotidian, but to the same degree a corporal materiality performed by the hands of those same scientists. Dark tropical hands, hands that wanted to translate the construction of laboratory walls into the building of a new society, a modern society because founded on science but also because it would be based on the separation of science and society: a sophisticated and complex construction made of materiality and immateriality, a construction of bricks and spaces.
The times of the abandoned farmhouse is also useful for glimpsing a more subtle story, one about an attempt to overcome distinctions between ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ in a redefined planet that included Brazil as a place of science and included the practitioners of that science among those who were considered ‘civilized people . Therefore, stories of incidents and narratives that dared to include the tropics on the political map of the planet and show that civilization existed below the equator.4 Stories about a local dialect that sought to be included within the international language of a new colonizer, modern science.
NOTES
National Serum Therapy Institute.
Roots of Brazil.
Nancy Stepan mentions a book by Louis Agassiz [AGASSIZ, Louis, AGASSIZ, Elizabeth C., 1868, A Journey to Brazil, Boston, Ticknor and Fields], the celebrated North American geologist, on occasion of his visit to Brazil, in the late 19th century, which also illustrates the difficulties encountered by Brazilian scientists when faced with manual labor: (…) Agassiz found the Brazilian scientists lacking in an interest in experimental science and their institutions inadequately supplied with materials for undertaking modern science. Surrounded as they are with a nature rich beyond compare, he wrote, nonetheless, their naturalists are theoretical rather than practical. He attributed the absence of experimental science in part to the institution of slavery, which he believed led to disdain for the manual labor that was essential for science.
As long, he wrote, as students of nature think it unbecoming a gentleman to handle his own specimens, to carry his own geological hammer, to make his own preparations, he wil remain a dilettante in investigation. He may be very familiar with recorded facts, but he will make no original researches [STEPAN,1976:30- 31].
- The nonexistence of civilization’ in the tropics is commented upon by S‚rgio Buarque de Holanda when he notes, referring to the libertarian sexual habits of the Brazilian population during the initial centuries of colonization, that “(…) it was current in Europe, during the XVIIth century, the belief that below the equator sin was nonexistent: Ultra aequinoxialem non peccari. Barlaeus, who mentions this dictum, comments upon it, saying: ‘As if the line that divides the world in two hemispheres also separated virtue from vice [HOLANDA,1987:198].
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DIAS, Ezequiel, 1922, Tra‡os de Oswaldo Cruz . In: V rios autores, 1972, Oswaldo Cruz no julgamento dos contemporƒneos, cap. 6, Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ/FGV.
HOLANDA, S‚rgio Buarque de, 1987, Ra¡zes do Brasil. 19a. ed. Rio de Janeiro, Jos‚ Olympio. (A french translation appeared as Racines du Br‚sil, at Gallimard, Paris).
LATOUR, Bruno, 1987, Science in Action. Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.
LAW, John, 1998, Political Philosophy and Disabled Specificities. Paper presented to the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.
STEPAN, Nancy, 1976, Beginning of Brazilian Science (Oswaldo Cruz, Medical Research and Policy, 1890-1920), Science History Publications, New York.
VASCONCELLOS, Henrique Figueiredo de, 1922, Not¡cia hist¢rica sobre o preparo da vacina antipestosa por Oswaldo Cruz no Instituto de Manguinhos . In: V rios autores, 1972, Oswaldo Cruz no julgamento dos contemporƒneos, cap. 7, Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ/FGV.
The author is a doctoral candidate at the Coordena‡ o de Programas de P¢s-Gradua‡ o em Engenharia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. This paper was presented at the EASST 98 General Conference. The author likes to thank Ivan da Costa Marques for his support and encouragement and Kirk Rowell for his revision of my English version. This paper would not have been written without the support of these two friends.
author’s address: Rua Capistrano de Abreu, 28 apt. 103, Humait Rio de Janeiro 22271-000, Brasil
e-mail: hcukier@uninet.com.br.