Dr. Oswaldo Cruz was making ready to go to the Amazon, which is in a specially wholesome condition; he had already fulfilled a mission there last year. He will now complete the task of general sanitation already started, for which the Congress has furnished the necessary funds. This, perhaps, is the most important part of his project, for it will throw open an immense region of unlimited productiveness to every sort of civilised activity.
Such a work would suffice to the glory of any one life, but Dr. Oswaldo Cruz is one of those men who are capable of continuing indefinitely their labours. The ex-pupil of the Pasteur Institute was anxious to endow his country with a similar school of therapeutics and prophylaxy. In a picturesque loop of the bay there stood a small building which was used by the engineer of the prefecture in the burning of rubbish. Dr. Oswaldo Cruz has transformed it into the Institut Manguinhos (Institute of Experimental Medicine), with the special mission to study infectious and parasitic diseases in men and animals, as well as hygiene, and to prepare the different serums which modern therapeutics has adopted. It was hardly necessary, perhaps, to add all the fioritura of Moorish architecture to a building intended for studies that call for no flourish of trumpets; still, there is something about these fanciful lines which harmonises agreeably enough with the natural arabesques of the prodigal learage. The institute aims at supreme perfection, and supplies having been furnished without stint, the results place it beyond comparison. Vast laboratories, comfortable studies, fitted up with all the latest appliances; operating-rooms for animals, with the most complete surgical outfits, disinfecting-rooms, vacuum machinery; lifts everywhere, gas, electricity, pipes for water and for compressed air; library and magazine-room, with all foreign periodicals properly classified; separate buildings for the study of infectious diseases and the preparation of the corresponding serum. Each building has its own stable, so constructed as to be readily sterilised, with boxes permitting a close watch over the animal as well as feeding him without opening the door; and its own hall for experiments and laboratory, a furnace to destroy all refuse, electric generating engines, etc.
A group of young Brazilian savants were at work under the guidance of Dr. Oswaldo Cruz and two German bacteriologists. One of them, Dr. Chagas, a Brazilian, is well known in the world of science for his studies in bacteriology and parasitology. There is an immense field open, for tropical diseases are still uncharted, whilst in the field of marasitic diseases of men and animals there is fully as much to learn.
The Mémoires de l'Institut de Manguinhos are published in Portuguese and in German. I was struck by the effort that the Germans are making to draw towards themselves the medical corps of the country. The heads of the laboratories and their assistants had all been brought from Germany, and their scientific method had been cordially accepted. At the Berlin Exhibition a first prize had justly been awarded to the Manguinhos Institute. Of late years two French savants, MM. Marchoux and Salimboni, of the Pasteur Institute, have been charged by the Brazilian Government with a mission to study yellow fever. To-day two of our army veterinaries are investigating the morve at Rio.
But it is time to leave the abode of the Mosquito Killer (mata mosquitos), as Dr. Cruz is nicknamed. The sun is mounting above the horizon. In the enchanting light of the bay there are now revealed to our gaze the serrated outlines of the soft shores where the intensely profuse vegetation runs riot, the glowing masses of bare rock which rise high above the water to meet the sun against the filmy background of the distant mountains, and, lastly, the islands with their rippling masses of rich verdure, which spring skywards like an offering from the sea.
Impossible to pass the Island Viana by in silence. On the neighbouring island Señor L——, the descendant of a French family, has set up his dockyards for naval construction, which he took us to see with a modesty that was not without a point of legitimate pride. I shall not describe what is well known. There was a surprise in store for us, however, in the form of a colony of Japanese labourers working in wood and metal, and learning in this distant land a trade to be practised later in their own. Most diligent of workmen, remarkable by their gravity and steady application. Amongst them, tool in hand, one of those small boys whose oblique eyes we have learned to know by heart through the picture-albums of Nippon; dumb, motionless, the whole of his mind concentrated with intense force on the work in hand, this child of some ten years is taking a demonstration lesson in technical work that, as you see by his attitude, he is determined to profit by. I would rather have seen these little chaps playing at ball. I seem to see them as they show themselves to us, gathering up all their powers, even at the threshold of life, in order to take possession of the future. I was told that in the evening schools they accomplish wonders.
The day's work ended, Señor L—— crossed a short arm of the sea and landed in his own island of Viana, where he has laid out a large park which at the same time satisfies his love of the beautiful and of comfort. Each member of the family has a house to him- or herself—and what a house!—English, or perhaps American in style, with the finest supply of light and air provided by great bay windows opening upon that immense expanse of sea framed in beflowered shores and broken by high blue peaks which lose themselves in the sky. Kitchen-gardens, flowery meadows, lawns, groves, woods—there is nothing wanting, and each in turn is planted in the best possible way to take advantage of the splendours of the views. And to make Viana a world in itself, all the loveliest birds of Brazil are to be found in this earthly paradise; and the supreme magnificence of the Brazilian types of winged and feathered creatures repays in beauty what man's munificent generosity daily distributes. Here within reach of my hand a large yellow bird is pouring out its mad and merry song, while two toucans, with their exaggerated beaks, light up with gold and clear sapphire hues the sober green of the thicket. I pretend to try to catch them; they barely feign a retreat. Eden before the Fall! I congratulate Señor L—— on the artistic way in which he spends the money he succeeded in making in business—two talents that are seldom found together.
"It is all very well," he murmured in reply, "but you see what happens. My wife prefers Paris, and my children, who might have found here, at twenty minutes' run from Rio, a worthy occupation for their time, have elected to try their fate in the unknown. My eldest son is in New York. Ma parole! I believe he sells seltzer-water there, or something of the sort. What do you think of that?"