Later Work
Among the international scientific community, his prestige was already uncontested. In 1907, on occasion of the 14th International Congress on Hygiene and Demography in Berlin, he was awarded with the gold medal in recognition of the sanitation of Rio de Janeiro. In 1909, Oswaldo Cruz retired from the position as Director General for Public Health, dedicating himself exclusively to the Manguinhos Institute, which has been named after him. From the Institute he organized important scientific expeditions, which allowed a better knowledge about the health and life conditions in the interior of the country and contributed to the colonization of different regions. He eradicated the urban yellow fever in the State of Pará. His sanitation campaign in the state of Amazonas allowed concluding the construction of the Madeira-Mamoré railroad, which was interrupted due to the great number of deaths of malaria and yellow fever among the workers.
In 1913, he was elected a member of the Brazilian Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1915, due to health problems, he resigned from the directorship of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute and moved to Petrópolis, a small city in the mountains near Rio. On August 18, 1916, he was elected mayor of that city and outlined an extensive urbanization project he would not see implemented. In the morning of February 11, 1917, at only 44 years of age, he died of kidney failure.
As a consequence of the short but fruitful life of Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, an extremely important scientific and health institution was born, which marked the beginning of experimental medicine in Brazil in many areas. To this day it exerts a strong influence on Brazilian science, technology and public health.
Read more about this topic: Oswaldo Cruz
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“‘Tis not need we know our every thought
Or see the work shop where each mask is wrought
Wherefrom we view the world of box and pit,
Careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit
And serve our jape’s turn for a night or two.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)