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 Foundation after Oswaldo Cruz assumed its leadership in 1902. From there on, the institute became the base for memorable sanitation campaigns in an age of outbreaks and epidemics of the bubonic plague, yellow fever, and smallpox. The Institute, however, was not confined to Rio de Janeiro and, on the contrary, collaborated in the occupation of the country’s interior through scientific expeditions, aiding in the development of the country. When Oswaldo Cruz died, in 1917, the Institute, which by then already bore his name, was nationally consolidated through important scientific achievements, such as Carlos Chagas’ description of the complete cycle of the