Instituto Butantan and production of sera. The Instituto Butantan also operate the "Hospital Vital Brazil", a specialist hospital that offers free treatment for poisonous animal stings and bites. The institute also accepts donations of serpents, arthropods and other animals captured by the public and by a network of collaborating centers and individuals. The following research laboratories are part of the Butantan Institute: Important Brazilian scientists who have worked in the Butantan Institute are: Vital Brazil, Afrânio Pompílio Gastos do Amaral, Isaias Raw, Samuel Pessoa, Willy Beçak. The Institute has strong collaborative ties with the Pasteur Institute, Paris, France, and with the Oswaldo
Oswaldo Cruz Cruz. As a child, he moved to Rio de Janeiro with his family. At the age of 15 he started to study at the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro and in 1892 he graduated as medical doctor with a thesis on water as vehicle for the propagation of microbes. Inspired by the great work of Louis Pasteur, who had developed the germ theory of disease, four years later he went to Paris to specialize in bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute, which gathered the great names of this branch of science of that time. He was financed by his