OUTSTANDING WORK AND WORKERS 99 



a health department, has overcome its yellow-fever epi- 

 demics, while the endemic centers of typhoid hold little 

 terror. Snake bites and bites of poisonous spiders no longer 

 mean death, and territory that was considered absolutely 

 impossible for man's habitation has become a growing 

 center of beauty and even of health. 



Outstanding as the most spectacular scientific work in 

 all Latin America is the snake farm of Dr. Vital Brazil, 

 founded at Butantan, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, in 

 Brazil. All other snake farms of the world, every one of 

 whose founders were students of Dr. Brazil, drew their 

 inspiration from this remarkable mother institution. 



Here one finds as many as 10,000 snakes at one time, 

 sent in by inhabitants from all regions of the country. 

 Payment for the snakes is made with little vials of anti- 

 venin which means so much in the interior of the country 

 where snakes are many and physicians few. 



In the museum on the farm are specimens of all those 

 types and forms of reptiles and spiders, together with 

 models of the lesions formed in man by their respec- 

 tive bites. 



Rio de Janeiro has a great research institution, known 

 as the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, brought into existence by, 

 and named after, the man who founded it — Oswaldo 

 Cruz. To him, not only Rio de Janeiro, but all the tropics 

 owe an everlasting debt of gratitude for changing yellow 

 fever from the most-feared and from an ever-recurring 

 epidemic to an almost unknown disease. 



The present director of the Institute is Dr. Carlos Cha- 



