Adolpho Lutz: Education and First Works

Freiherr von Schleinitz. 41 Two years after his return, be became a professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the Bern School of Veterinary Medicine.

In 1877, the University of Bern held a contest of monographs on subjects related to natural history. Adolpho Lutz spent spring and summer of that year intensively collecting specimens of cladoceran

fauna from the lakes and watercourses in the region, 42 producing a work that won an award from the Faculty of Philosophy and was published in the Bern National Sciences Society Annals.

His interest in these tiny crustaceans would grow considerably in the second half of the century, after the discovery of the important role they play in the food chain of fresh water and sea water fauna. Franz Leydig (1860, p.2), a professor at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, had already underlined the importance of these invertebrates in his treatise Naturgeschichte der Daphniden (Crustacea, Cladocera [Natural History of Daphnids]:

It’s not everyone who is interested in studying organisms without

ulterior motives. Interest in animals is, generally, determined by

their use to human beings ... or ... because they are dangerous.

To the friends of nature who think this way, the author takes

great pleasure in informing, with the purpose of providing a

reason why more attention should be devoted to these small

and discrete living things, that Cladocera and cyclopoids are the

principal food of the tastiest fish in the mountain lakes of Bavaria

and in Lake Bodensee [Lake Constance], in the South of

Germany . They are, when referring to sheer quantities, the

most populous living organisms in researched water. Therefore,

it must be admitted that the small ostracods are very useful for

human beings, albeit indirectly, on account that they feed a

great number of fish.

The study of marine organisms was strongly encouraged by the new collection technique developed by Johannes Müller, a professor at the University of Berlin who was revered as the “father of physiology and theorical biology in Germany”

(www.szn.it/acty99web/acty014.htm). During one excursion with his

students to the Island of Helgoland, in the North Sea,43 he used a very finely meshed net to collect microscopic organisms suspended in the water. The success of the ‘plankton net’ would prompt an exponential rise in the study of these microscopic organisms. Among the first to analyze their importance in the food chain was the Swiss Wilhem Lilljeborg (1816-1908), professor of zoology at Uppsala (Carl Linnaeus University) and the Norwegian Georg Ossian Sars (1837-

1927):44

Island of Helgoland, in the North Sea, where Johannes Müller and

 

other German biologists and doctors started collecting sea fauna.

www.helgolandmarathon.de/

 

Participants of the biological tour of Helgoland in 1865. From left to

right: A. Dohm. R. Greff, E. Haeckel, Sitting: Salverda and P. Marchi.

Photo from www.awi-bremerhaven.de/BAH/history.html.

when throwing finely meshed nets in the waters of the Baltic,

they found an entire fauna and flora, principally microscopic, of

a well adjusted society of organisms, which included forms of

synthesized plants and the animals that eat them; and there His studies were not restricted to the systematics of Cladocera. Lutz also observed their living and reproduction habits, their habitat, propagation, predators, parasites, and the symbiosis of these microcrustaceans. Lutz’s Darwinist influence and his acceptance of the concept of natural selection can be seen clearly when he

exist among these animals all the social groups of herbivores

and carnivores, parasites and decomposers (Welch, 1935, p.4).

Although we have known about Cladocera since the 17 th Century, the first classification of microscopic organisms that included these microcrustaceans was published only in 1786, by Otto Fredrich

Müller (17301784), another Danish naturalist.45

The first study of Cladocera in Switzerland is dated 1820: Histoire des Monocles qui se trouvent aux environs de Genève, by Louis Jurine. According to Leydig (1860, p.3), although the book, published after the author’s death with pictures drawn by his daughter, did examine some physiological relations, it was essentially descriptive. In 1870, the Danish researcher Peter Eramus Müller published an article on Cladocera from large Swiss lakes; three years earlier, he had published a study on those he had found in his own country. Another of Lutz’s predecessors was François-Alphonse Forel, professor at the University of Lausanne, who had been studying

deep-water fauna in Lake Leman since 1869. 46

The city of Geneve: Lake Geneve and snow-capped Mont Blanc.

Drawing by Dh. Weber based on the photo by M. Garcin (Reclus,

1878, p.89, fig. 12).

In his research on microcrustaceans, Lutz used all the experience acquired during his years as an amateur naturalist, perfectly fitting the profile idealized by Leyden (1860, p.5): “I would be happy to encourage young researchers ... to give them information on the daphnia of their homeland. The fact that one such notable species as Bythotrephes (from Lake Bodensee) ... should have remained unknown until then is evidence of the great probability that new species will still be discovered.”

During the course of his diurnal and nocturnal collections, the young Brazilian doctor employed all known techniques to capture both infauna and pelagic animals, discovering 42 species proper and 19 genus classes in the different habitats he researched. One that did not match the existing description in the bibliography he consulted was described by Lutz as a new species from the Cladocera family; he named it Alona verrucosa.

addresses the dispersion and adaptation of these animals.47 When analyzing the presence or absence of certain groups in the researched environments, he comments:

A greater influence seems to be exercised by the elimination

provoked by better adapted species from the same family or

from a different family. Thus, in the Bleienbach peaty swamp,

which contains a series of trenches populated by Cladocera,

there is only one where they are not found. However, in

compensation, it is home to an enormous quantity of a miniscule

species of ostracod (Lutz, 1879, p.18).

Lutz reached a similar conclusion to Laydin’s: the lack of systematic research on fauna had created false interpretations about the representativeness of the animals of Switzerland.

The work of the young Brazilian naturalist was presented to the Bern Natural Sciences Society (Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Bern), an institution with a history nearly a century long. In 1786, Jakob Samuel Wyttenbach (17491830), Samuel Emanuel Studer (1757-1834) and other naturalists founded the Bern Private Friends of Science Society (Privatgesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde in

Bern). 48 In 1815, the name was changed and in 1843 it began publishing its own periodical, the Mittheilungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Bern. According to the 1873 statute, the objective of the Society was “to promote and disseminate the natural sciences and mathematics”, and it was comprised of both effective members and correspondents; candidates for effective membership being “all friends of natural sciences who live in the canton of Bern”. Frequented by the professional elite — doctors, pharmacists, engineers, liberal professionals and, primarily, the university teaching body — members met every four Saturdays for “general conferences” to discuss matters of interest to its members and to hear lectures on the progress of each science. Each year, the members elected a secretary and a president, who convened specific sessions whenever the material was available. All the

presented works were placed in the Society’s annals.49

Sida crystallina Cladocera with internal structures highlighted

(Leydig, 1860, plate VI, drawing by the author).

In the session dated March 8, 1878 (presided over by T. Rothen, one of Bern’s telephony directors, and with the presence of secretary Gabriel Valentin, a university physiology professor), Teophil Studer, Adolpho Lutz’s zoology professor, read to the 22 members present his student’s report that had won an award from the Faculty of Philosophy. Published in the Society’s annals in the following year (Lutz, 1879, pp. 38-54), it was cited by the Zoological Record in 1879 (pp. 3, 40 and 41), which emphasized the description of a new species – Alona verrucosa – and the geographic distribution of Alona lineata and Chydories sphaericus (Mill) “at St. Giacomo pass, at a height of 2,400 meters”. Curiously, the species described by Lutz was forgotten by specialists until 22 years after the report’s publication; in 1901, the name Alona verrucosa was used by Georg

Ossian Sars to name a new species of South American Cladocera. 50 However, the Norwegian researcher used the name incorrectly, as the Law of Homonymy, contained in article 57 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, states that the junior homonym

must be rejected and replaced (ICZN, 1985, p.105). 51

Adolpho Lutz continued his study of Cladocera as soon as he arrived in Leipzig, seeing that the fauna of the region had never been submitted to systematic study (Lutz, 1878, p. 36). His second report was presented to the Leipzig Natural Sciences Society and also published in its annals. At the time, lecturing at the city’s university was one of the leading figures in experimental zoology: Karl Georg

Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart (1822-1898), 52 who received his doctorate from the University of Gõttingen in 1847 and was a follower of Rudolph Wagner (1805-1864), having collaborated on Handwörterbuch der physiologie (Manual of Physiology). Leuckart worked at the University of Gottingen’s Institute of Physiology and, in 1850, began to lecture comparative zoology and zootomy at the University of Giessen, becoming head of department five years later. In 1870, when he was 48 years old, he moved to the University of Leipzig to head up the zoology and zootomy department, where he built a well equipped Institute of Zoology. His reputation attracted students and collaborators from the world over, and a good many of them became renowned specialists in applied zoology. Human and veterinary medicine gained much from Leuckart’s research. He discovered how trichina is transmitted from pigs to humans and researched all the biology of these intestinal worms, as he did with tapeworm. He contributed to agriculture by explaining of the complicated evolution and transmission of distomatosis in sheep. Leuckart published equally important work on other helminthic parasites in humans and animals and also on cattle ticks, viviparous flies and bees. He discovered the existence of micropyles in insect eggs and demonstrated the need for spermatozoon to come into direct contact with the contents of the egg before fertilization and embryonic development can occur. Die menschlichen Parasiten und die von ihnen hervorgerufenen Krankheiten (The parasites of human beings and the diseases caused by them), a book published in 1863-1876, in Leipzig, was for several decades a key reference for physicians and zoologists. The second edition (1879), on which his student Gustav Brandes collaborated, also included animal parasites (Petzsch, 1973, p.63-4).

Title page of The Zoological Record for 1879, published by E. C. Rye (1881, p.41), registering Alona verrucosa, the new species described

by Adolpho Lutz.

In other volumes of the Collected Works of Adolpho Lutz, the reader will gain a more precise idea of Leuckart’s enormous influence on the Brazilian zoologist’s research into helminths and other worms. For the time being, though, we will emphasize his role in Lutz’s study of Cladocera.

Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart (1822-1898). Sketch

reproduced in Petzch (1973, p.63).

Just like Johnnes Müller (1801-1858), Leuckart embarked on his first expedition to the North Sea shortly after completing his doctorate, and he used the technique of collecting marine organisms with a finely meshed net. His research from this expedition led to a reclassification of Cuvier’s Radiata, which he divided into two groups: Coelenterata (polyps, jellyfish and corals) and Echinodermata (sea cucumbers, starfishes and sea urchins). Leuckart was particularly interested in invertebrates and their biology, and as an astute taxonomist, he sought to establish clear distinctions between invertebrates, which had been classified in a somewhat confusing way.

Adolpho Lutz’s work in Leipzig on Cladocera merited Leuckart’s full support, so much so that Leuckart presented it to the city’s Natural Sciences Society and thus ensured its publication (Lutz, 1878, p.36-41). Lutz collected specimens in his spare time, dedicating October and November of 1877 and the whole summer of 1878 to the task. But this meager amount of time only enabled him gather small collections, and he considered his work to be incomplete. However, he still managed to collect 35 species proper and 16 genus groups, and one new variety he named Daphnia hyalina. Lutz also described, for the first time, the male of the species Alona

acanthocercoides 53 Fischer.

Darwinist concepts were employed here to analyze the formation of

ephippia and the emergence of males54 in parthenogenetic species, as well as their relationship with external factors. Lutz contended that this ability seems to have been acquired by some species through natural selection; “on the other hand, I judge it to be doubtful that the appearance of males and ephippia could be caused, with any certainty, through desiccation or falling temperatures” (Lutz, 1878, p.41).

Fascinated by small crustaceans, Lutz took his collection of Cladocera with him when he left Leipzig, with the intention of continuing his research in Strasbourg. When he arrived there, in December 1878, a colleague from the University of Leipzig wrote to inform him of the new staining techniques that may be of help:

I’m pleased to make use of the opportunity to send you some

information I read a short while ago. I suppose, naturally, that

research of Cladocera etc. still occupies your spare time. I’d like

to tell you about some news concerning the staining of these

organisms. You know how resistant these animals are to all

dyeing methods. I believe I’ve already told you, in my last letter,

that a zoologist here has discovered a method of maceration, a

fact I deem necessary to keep secret, given this man is also a

businessman. However, in the meantime, Dr. Paul Mayer has

conducted research in Italy, in the Naples Institute of Zoology,

with the intention of obtaining satisfactory colors with the

application of some suitable dye to the membranes of

undamaged chitin. He had no success with an alcoholized

solution of carmine, but he did when he tried a cochineal dye

that can also be used for other purposes: powdered cochineal

should be left in contact with 70% alcohol in 1 gr. 810 cc, for

several days, filtering the dark red solution it produces. The

objects to be stained must not contain acid; even better it would

be [to let them stand], beforehand, for some time in 70%

alcohol. Depending on the size and nature of the object, the

staining may take anywhere from a few minutes (ciliophora,

pelagic organisms, larvae, etc.) to several days (larger

crustaceans, young cephalopods, vertebrate organs, etc.). The

extraction of dye fixed in the tissue is again achieved with 70%

alcohol; continue with caution for a long time, even for days on

end, until the alcohol can absorb no more.

 

Leipzig. Gandelstation (gondola station), 1905. This is one of the places where Lutz probably collected Cladocera (Sohl, 1989, p.53).

This process will achieve a very precise, and almost always

intense coloring of the nucleus. I have had the opportunity to

see very beautiful preparations! It is remarkable that the stain

has the color ofhematoxylin. The cochineal dye is in no way

altered, nor is the alcoholized hematoxylin solution [of

Kleinenberg], which, however, does not work well in this case.

Aside from this, its preparation and application is simpler, while

its durability, according to information from Mayer, compares

with that of carmine.

There is no need to worry about excessive coloring, although if

this does occur, it can be removed by washing in alcohol acid (a

drop of HCI in nearly 10cm of 70% alcohol). Conserved best in

resins; the dye, informs Mayer, will probably not be so resistant

to glycerin, although more tests are needed.

I hope you soon manage to apply this dye. I haven’t got any

Cladocera to give you; you can find cochineal in any large herb

store; incidentally, I don’t know whether the creatures you took

with you, in alcohol, are still stainable, but regardless, you can at

least try.55

On returning to Bern, Lutz enrolled once again in the university, took classes in clinical medicine with Ludwig Lichtheim and, shortly afterwards, took his final examinations and received his qualification to practice medicine on July 19, 1879. He chose to specialize in clinical medicine and, in preparation for his doctorate thesis, sought a position in the Cantonal Hospital of Bern. Unable to find a job there, he instead opted for St. Gallen, a town located in northeastern Switzerland, near Lake Constance (Bodensee). On August 27, 1879, the hospital’s administrative council accepted Lutz as an assistant doctor on a one year contract. In the meantime, while he was awaiting the appointment, he continued to study Cladocera and planned to visit the researcher François-Alphonse Forel, who lived in Morges. Forel wrote to Lutz on July 29, 1879:

My dear Sir,

When I spent a few days in Bern recently, I had hoped to have

the pleasure of visiting you, but I was prevented from doing so

by the short amount of spare time left over after our extremely

busy sessions.

I wish to express my regret at not being at home now and at not,

therefore, being able to receive you now that you are

unoccupied. I am with my family, spending some days in the

countryside, where my parents live, and their house is so full of

visitors that I am reluctant to ask them to receive another. If you

are still free in the fall when we return to the city, my wife and I

would be very happy to offer you hospitality and, as far as I am

concerned, it would be a great pleasure to provide you with

whatever I can, despite the fact that this is not your favorite topic

on our Lake Leman.

I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you in St. Gallen, at the

meeting of the Swiss Naturalists. In this hope, I extend to you,

my dear sir, my affectionate sentiments.56

Lutz joined the St. Gallen Natural History Society and was admitted at the session on October 1, 1879. According to the society’s activity report for the 1880/81 year, signed by its president, Dr. B. Wartmann, the society was having much difficulty maintaining a high quality level of publications, a fact that he attributed to the growing fragmentation of those circles of natural history enthusiasts. Wartmann had hoped to resolve this situation by enlisting more young scholars in the Society’s scientific debates. (St. Gallische Naturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, 1882. pp.1-2). Adolpho Lutz’s involvement in the Society was, in fact, short-lived. Given his new duties as a physician and the need to prepare a thesis, his natural history studies took a back seat for the time being.

Inaugurated in May 1873, the construction of the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen had in fact been under consideration since 1845 (Fritschi, 1997, p. 100). In 1858, Drs. Steinlin and Wegelin published the paper “About the founding, construction and organization of a Cantonal Hospital in St. Gallen”, based on visits they had made to hospitals in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt am Main and Zurich. This report subsidized the preparation of the hospital’s blueprints in 1868-69 and, once approved by the leaders of the canton, construction got underway immediately. The regulations introduced when the hospital opened spelled out the duties of the four doctors responsible for running the hospital – when Lutz worked there, they were Drs. Wegelin, Züblin, Hilty and Bänziger. They were in charge of the surgical department, two departments for inpatients, the ophthalmology unit and the outpatient treatment service. In addition to supervising the work of the nurses, they were also responsible for inspecting instruments, bandages and equipment, and for ensuring the cleanliness, ventilation, heating and brightness of the wards. In order to cope with all of these responsibilities, the four doctors counted on the assistance of a surgical assistant and a medical assistant, for whom the hospital would be a training ground where they could pursue their practical studies.

Hired only six years after its inauguration, Adolpho Lutz had several responsibilities, as he himself would recall in 1936 (p. 853):

The hospital was new and well equipped. All the services of the

Medicine Department were the responsibility of the assistant

intern, who, on top of this, would assist the surgical operations

on a daily basis and give an hour’s consultation at the polyclinic,

while also making up the simpler prescriptions and performing

the autopsies. There was a ward set aside for infectious

diseases … All the patients were visited three times each day.

There were bars on the windows of this ward to prevent

accidents with delirious patients, a precaution that is

unfortunately neglected here and in other places.

St. Gallen Hospital (Fritschi, 1997, p.128).

During the nine months he spent there,57 Adolpho Lutz wrote his thesis and published, in Edwin Klebs’ periodical Correspondenz – Blatt für Schweizer Aertze, a clinical study on a case of acute fibrinous bronchitis (Lutz, 1880, p. 488-91). The illness, known these days as pseudo-membranosis, croupous or plastic bronchitis, or even Championnière disease, had been described by the French doctor Just-Marie-Marcellin Lucas-Champonnière: (1843-1913): characterized by an acute inflammation of the mucous membrane that lines the entire bronchial tree, triggering violent coughing and paroxysms of dyspnea, with expectoration of bronchial casts or tubes (Stedman, 1979:192; Cardenal, 1960). Although his work was not so academically relevant, Lutz considered it important to describe the disease given its rarity in the region – it was the first ever case registered at the hospital – and the favorable outcome, as, at the time, the disease was still considered to be of an “enigmatic

nature” (Lutz, 1880: 488).58 The patient treated by Lutz was a young woman, 22 years old, the average age of people who most frequented the hospital, according to a report from 1876. The report also states that female patients were usually working women, often with typhoid fever or “gastric catarrh” (inflammation of the stomach) (Fritschi, ibid: 215). Lutz’s patient was admitted in the Spring of 1879 with diphtheria and scarlet fever, and would return months later (1/28/1880), having been diagnosed with laryngeal croup by the doctor who treated her at her home. On examining her at the hospital, Lutz wavered in his diagnosis between “croupous bronchitis

or a primary diphtheric infection of the air passages”.59 The disease evolved rapidly, and four days later the patient was fully recovered. In the report he published on this case, Lutz described in detail the patient’s symptoms and the results of the analysis of the expectorated material during all the stages, principally the fibrinous coagulum and the bronchial fragments contained in vomit. The Brazilian doctor recommended to his peers that they read up on the use of quebracho preparations for cases of dyspnea, and this was a sign that these results would be used to compose his thesis.

Encouraged by Ludwig Lichtheim, his clinical medicine professor at Bern, Lutz decided to test the therapeutic properties of substances extracted from the bark of a South American tree named “colorado

quebracho”. 60 The plant was well known among European doctors thanks to the work of a German doctor living in Argentina, F. Schikendanz, who in 1878 sent tree bark and other products from the region to Franz Penzoldt (1849-1927), a professor and head of clinical medicine at the University of Erlangen. Among the material he had sent was the bark of a tree with the name “quebracho”, with the observation that it is used by the natives as a fever remedy,

particularly in Tucuman and the surrounding country.61 Botanists were already aware of the tree as a consequence of the naturalist Hermann Burmeister, who had led a scientific expedition into the Argentine hinterland (1858-1860), and sent samples of “quebracho”

to the botanist Dierdich von Schlechtendal, in Halle. 62 This was the name given to trees with extremely hard wood in the region explored by Burmeister. In fact, he found two distinct trees called by the natives “quebracho-colorado” and “quebracho-blanco”, which had differently shaped leaves and differently colored wood. As far as Burmeister was concerned, one was simply a variety of the other, but Schlechtendal classified the white-wooded species Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco and called the one with the red bark Aspidosperma quebracho-colorado. The botanist in Halle believed the two belonged to the same family and the same genus group, which led to confusion over the chemical and therapeutic properties of each one. The doubt was resolved by August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach (18141879), when he studied material collected by another German botanist, Paul Günther Lorentz (1835-1881), in

Cordoba, Argentina. 63 In a treatise published in 1874 (p. 67), Grisebach uncoupled the two species of quebracho, including the colorado in the family Terebinthacea (Anacardiaceae), genus Loxopterygium, species lorentzii. In 1878, he published another work on Argentine flora, and placed the species L. lorentzii in a new genus: Quebrachia. Over the following years, the species underwent several taxonomic revisions, and it is now called Schinopsis

quebracho-colorado 64 (Schlechtendal) Barkley et Meyer.

The thesis that Lutz proposed to write consisted of verifying the therapeutic action of quebracho-colorado, primarily in the treatment of dyspnea. Concerning the classification, Lutz emulated Grisebach (1878), naming the species to be studied Quebrachia lorentzii (synonym of Loxopterygium lorentzii). Given the difficulty of obtaining the tree’s specific extract, he used “Extractum ligni Quebracho aquosum siccum” from Büdingen, in Frankfurt, which, he was told, really did come from the lorentzii species. The product was supplied by the pharmacist Stein, vice president of the St. Gallen Natural

History Society (Lutz, 1880, p.7). 65 During his work on the thesis, Lutz became enthusiastic with the good results obtained with the preparation, and recommended it to his colleagues, stressing the small volume, its solubility and the possibility of it being administered

in pill form or as a clyster.66

Quebracho photographed in Mato Grosso, Brazil (Lorenzi, v.2,

2002).

Observations were made of patients from hospitals in St. Gallen and Bern, but it was a lengthy process due to the lack of suitable patients for studying the therapeutic properties of quebracho. Like any good scientist, Lutz began his experiments on healthy subjects, verifying the effects of the product, even on himself. When swallowing a small quantity of the extract in powder form (5g), he felt “a slight sensation of continuous heat in the head, but not as strong as when provoked by inhaling a drop of ether amyl nitrate. Breathing was easy; but with some effort, perhaps more than usual. No notable effect on blood

pressure or temperature was verified”. 67

The effect of the substance was very different in patients with dyspnea. Lutz clearly observed in them a gradual diminishing in breathing frequency. After administering the medicine to some 28 patients with a history of pneumonia, emphysema, bronchitis, tuberculosis, pleural problems, phthisis, febrile illnesses and heart conditions, all duly monitored for breathing frequency, heartbeat and body temperature, Lutz reached the same conclusion that Penzoldt had come to about quebracho-branco: quebracho-colorado may also be used successfully for the various forms of dyspnea, and the Brazilian doctor assumed that the active principle of both was either the same or very similar.

Lutz’s findings made no headlines in the medical world. Nowadays we know that the action of quebracho-colorado is far less effective than originally thought, in contrast to quebracho-blanco, which is still used for its qualities as an antispasmodic, an antiasthmatic, a tonic,

an astringent and a febrifuge.68 The quebracho-colorado does have a commercial value; it is used in industry and civil construction in virtue of the hardness of its wood, its high caloric power as a fuel

and because it is one of the richest known sources of tannin.69

In his doctorate thesis, Lutz thanks the support of two doctors from St. Gallen, Adolf Fehr and Hilty, and two professors from Bern: Balthasar Luchsinger (1849-1886), from the Institute of Pharmaceutics and head of the veterinary medicine department from 1878 to 1884, and Lichtheim, his tutor. His diploma as Doctor of Medicine “Summa cum laude” was issued by the University of Bern on July 28, 1880.

Now 25 years old, and having spent 17 away from his family, Lutz decided it was time to return to Brazil. But before leaving, he visited some of the centers of Europe to advance his knowledge. In the second half of 1880, he spent three months in Vienna, one of the world’s greatest centers of clinical medicine and dermatology, and he attended several short courses there. Later, he spent three months in the capital of Great Britain, where he had the opportunity to sit in on the lectures and surgical procedures of Joseph Lister at King’s College Hospital, University of London. He also visited Paris, in July 1881; he spent only a month in the city but biographers say Lutz met Pasteur. The young recently-graduated doctor then returned to Bern,

repacked his bags and left for Brazil.70

Vienna. Graben (the trenches). Sketch by H. Clerget after photo by

M. Czihak (Reclus, 1878, p.205).

 

A Germanic doctor in the slavocratic empire of D.

Pedro II

When Lutz arrived in the capital of the Empire of Brazil in 1881, he moved into his parents’ house, which doubled as the Swiss-Brazilian school his mother and sisters ran, in the neighborhood of Catete. One of his first precautions was to certify his diploma at the Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Medicine (Albuquerque, 1950, p.10-1; B. Lutz, Lutziana). In an article published in April 1882 in Correspondenz-Blatt für Schweizer Aerzte, Adolpho Lutz commented on this formality and reported on medicine in the Brazilian Empire.

At this time, educational reforms were being implemented at the universities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, which housed nearly a thousand students, two thirds of them in the latter city. The new classrooms, preparatory rooms and laboratories that were being opened, the practical teaching methods and new disciplines that were being introduced represented tremendous progress from the previous situation. But a closer look revealed several deficiencies: basic education left much to be desired and the performance of Brazilian schools was far from rivaling German, French or English universities. Nevertheless, Lutz claimed that the main problem lay with the Brazilian mentality: “Punctuality, constancy and scientific sincerity are alien to them, and they are completely satisfied just keeping up appearances. Personal likes and dislikes frequently take the place of the law. Protectionism and nepotism are like a canker that cannot be exterminated.”

Another problem was its unilateral connection to France, and the refusal to accept influences from other countries, particularly the Germanic nations. In order to practice their profession in Brazil, foreigners first had to take an exam at one of the local universities. For those who had no diploma, but could prove their competence, examinations equivalent to the full university course were mandatory before they could practice medicine. Those who intended to work only as surgeons, without the right to the title of doctor, had to pass at least two sets of examinations and defend a thesis. Foreign professors from recognized institutions and writers of important publications were exempt from the exams and from paying the fees. “It’s a very flexible legislation,” remarked Lutz, “which opens the doors to personal favoritism”. Examiners conducted their tests in Portuguese and often in French, as members of the local elite “almost without exception, speak this language fluently. Doctors, in particular, depend on French textbooks to study”. Learning German or English was practically out of the question, although there were “among the younger doctors some who spoke German, at times surprisingly well, testimony to the linguistic talent of Brazilians”.

It was not easy for foreigners to learn the native language correctly:

Santa Casa da Misericórdia, on Santa Luzia beach, when the sea

used to come to the doors of the hospital. There, most Rio de

Janeiro Medical School theoretical and practical activities took place

and Adolpho Lutz did his exams to revalidate his diploma (Ferrez,

1895, p.13

as there are wide variations between the way it is spoken and

the actual spelling, depending on the person, and one can only

learn to speak the language properly with those more educated.

In virtue of this, we also run the risk of not being understood by

uneducated people, such as servants, blacks etc. My colleagues

can only imagine the difficulty of trying to discover the basic

anamnesis of a black slave who doesn’t even know how old he

is. When …, after a 15-minute interview with the patient, we had

to write our report, there would certainly be no need for a

pilocarpine injection to induce sweating, even with the

thermometer showing less than 30°C.

According to Adolpho Lutz, there was a vast field of action for European doctors in Brazil. Their knowledge of French medicine and the French language, much appreciated at the time, helped them become successful. He did warn, however, that:

deceit and propaganda are employed here to an extent that

would be unimaginable in Germanic countries. The code of

ethics is so rarely applied that any controversy is printed in the

newspapers, and many colleagues are unashamed to accuse

others, or dismiss this or that patient to hell before their time …

poorer patients often pay their fees in the form of a public show

of gratitude or with a propaganda message … It is a well known

fact that many doctors receive a commission from

pharmaceutical companies for the prescriptions they make …

Brazilian doctors, in the majority of cases, follow the principle of

progressive taxation, but in the hinterland, their shamelessness

very often knows no limits.

Despite the advantages of living in the large cities, Lutz claimed that the cost of living was three times higher than in Switzerland and, in Rio de Janeiro, added to the inconvenience of the heat, there was the risk of yellow fever. In smaller towns, foreigners faced hardships, but the beauty of the nature provided some compensation for this, and those who ran a reputable practice could make a fortune, just like in Europe. Income varied by region, money being scarce in some and abundant in others, such as certain coffee-growing areas and some German colonies in the South.

Some evidence suggests that the exploration of blacks coupled with the prevalent slavocratic mentality constituted yet another ugly characteristic of Brazilians for the young doctor who, his daughter claims, had inherited his grandfather’s liberal values. Lutz was a proud man of German upbringing, he respected authority founded on competence and wisdom, and was so methodical and inflexible in both his professional and everyday activities that those who knew him would remember that ‘precisely’ was one of his favorite words. The aforementioned article on Brazilian medicine alludes to the difficulties slaves had expressing themselves when questioned by the doctor, although it does not voice his opinion of slavery. In Lutziana, however, Bertha Lutz recalls a something her father told her:

when he was taking his exams at Santa Casa da Misericórdia to

certify his diploma, among the candidates was a man of pure

black race. Much to his surprise, Lutz heard one of the

examiners say: we are doing everything possible to fail him, but

he is extremely well prepared. To which Mr. Lutz, with his

familiar simplicity, replied: But if he is so well prepared, why fail

him?

Arthur Neiva (1941, p.ii), who worked for several years with Lutz in Manguinhos, in the same laboratory, mentions the shock he felt on coming to work in a country where slavery existed, and he corroborated the accounts that “his deeply liberal spirit” was in conflict with “race prejudice, particularly towards colored people who, when deserving, were treated with the utmost consideration”.

Lutz stayed in Rio de Janeiro for eight months, while he awaited his qualifying examination. In the translated Portuguese version of his thesis, he added some information he considered important to assist understanding by Brazilian doctors, while omitting other information of little relevance for them. At the request of the Faculty, he also included six aphorisms of Hippocrates.

The subject of his thesis caused him to shift further towards botany, and in Rio de Janeiro, Lutz befriended Wilhelm Schwacke, a German botanist who had emigrated to Brazil in 1873 and had been employed in March of the following year as a traveling naturalist for

the Imperial Museum. 71 In 1881, he and Ladislau Netto, director of the museum, embarked on an expedition to the Amazon to collect botanical and ethnographical material. From the state of Pará, on February 12, 1882, Schwacke wrote Lutz an extremely friendly letter:

Manioc Mill. Oil painting on canvas by the Spanish painter Modesto

 

Brocos y Gómez (Santiago de Compostela 1852 – Rio de Janeiro,

1936) exhibited in 1892 at the artist’s first exposition in Rio de

Janeiro. Museu Nacional de Belas Artes collection. Image

reproduced by Wright (1907, p.175).

Dear Lutz!

I was very sorry not to have seen you again before leaving Rio

… I waited for you and Lantz, but unfortunately you were not on

board. I returned this morning from my first long trip to Marajó.

We did some excavating in Parorial [sic], a small and forgotten

island on Lake Arary, in the center of Marajó, and we unearthed

some vessels containing still relatively well conserved human

skeletons…

Concerning the vegetation, it is truly impossible to express in

words what one sees and the sensation one feels. Nature here

is unique, and this opulence and abundance ofpalm trees,

species ofbamboo, could only be possible in an area that, close

to the equator as we are here, has a steady temperature ... just

like along the shores of the River Amazon, the palm trees are

most extraordinary plants: Mauritia flexuosa, Euterpe oleraceae

and Bactris maraja; there are whole groves of them, standing

out splendidly in the forest. You, of all people, can imagine how

enchanting it was to have spent some time in these forests and

grasslands. Despite the flooding of the forest and grasslands, I

collected ., even some plants whose family I am not aware .

...The young plant is very red, has no leaves and it grows like a

parasite on the roots of trees that are rarely covered by black

humus. It is Helosis guyanensis Rich. I’d be so happy if you

were here with me!

I wish you all the best and send you my regards, and I ask you

also to extend my warmest regards to both your family and

Lantz, and be assured of my sincere friendship and admiration.

Yours affectionately,

W. Schwacke72

In the first half of 1882, Adolpho Lutz attempted to settle as a physician in Petrópolis, but ended up moving to Limeira, where his sister Helena was now living after having married the German merchant Gottfried Wilhelm Luce.

From June 1882 until March 1885, Adolpho Lutz lived in that important coffee, sugarcane and grain center not far from São Paulo. At the time, the town had a population of nearly 14,000 and a large Swiss-German colony.

A thing of the past now were the so-called partnership experiments that led to uprisings by Swiss emigrants who were forced to live with slavery and, to a degree, work like slaves at coffee plantations; uprisings that were very well chronicled by the schoolteacher Thomas Davatz in Memórias de um colono no Brasil. The replacement of slave labor with paid European immigrants was now taking a turn for the better. According to Pestana (n.d. p.8), Gustav, Adolpho Lutz’s father, corresponded with several of the Swiss who worked on the Ibicaba plantation, belonging to Senator Vergueiro, one of the largest in the region. The plantation also hired German immigrants and a sizable number of North Americans, who had come from Louisiana after the War of Succession. They lived in a

small town nearby Santa Bárbara train station. 73 When Lutz (1936, p. 855) visited them, he had to spend the night in the town. He often visited the plantations in the region, where “payment was made periodically” (B. Lutz, Lutziana), and sometimes the sick patient was a slave.

The first time he was indignant for … lying on the floor, much to

the surprise of the plantation owner. Afterwards, he adopted a

different technique. He would say: ‘Of course, if your slave is so

valuable, I can examine him, but he must be put on a bed with a

blanket so I can examine with a stethoscope and raise his head.

Afterwards, seeing as he is a valuable slave, he’ll need taking

care of.’

According to Bertha Lutz, her father gradually implemented his own projects and expanded the clinic. He acquired a reputation as a respected diagnostician and started being called out to distant places that required long journeys on horseback, and with growing frequency people came from neighboring towns for a consultation.

Americana. Melons waiting to be put on board at the city North

Americans founded in São Paulo (Wright, 1907, p. 244).

Due to this treating the sick not only in Limeira but also in other towns along São Paulo’s Paulista railroad, he soon acquired a thorough knowledge of the diseases common to the region. Towards the end of 1882, he sent a short letter to one of the Swiss periodicals that had been publishing his articles since 1880; he described his first impressions of the São Paulo state hinterland and proposed some new ideas for future articles, based on his clinical experience in the region, while also underlining the potential contribution to medical geography. The diversity of the ethnic groups he treated provided him with abundant “observations on the influence of climate and the human race on various diseases; in my job I treat blacks, Brazilians and German, Portuguese and Italian immigrants, who, subsequently, provide me with very interesting comparative information” (Lutz, 1883, p.30). The studies he intended to send to his colleagues in Europe went to the heart of the discussions that at the time dragged on over races, which were considered almost to be different ‘species’ of humans, capable of adapting or ‘acclimatizing’ in different ways to the natural environment of tropical and temperate zones. (Radl, 1988; Harrison, 1999).

In a note published in 1882, Lutz criticized the healing method created by the self-taught German Carl Baunscheidt (1809-1873), based on the principles of mechanical stimulation and acupuncture

that were well known in Limeira and the surrounding area.74

 

Conclusion

The career of Adolpho Lutz (1855-1940) as a physician and scientist is, generally speaking, comprised of three periods. From 1881 to 1892 he was, primarily, a clinician, although he still published numerous original articles based on cases he was treating or his studies of the biology of species that, in one way or another, were related to humans and their pathology. These papers were composed in his spare time, with a firm discipline. As we will see in other titles in the Collected Works of Adolpho Lutz, this period was characterized by several relocations. He traveled through many regions of Brazil, Europe, the United States and Oceania, and also through several cognitive territories -clinical medicine, helminthology, bacteriology, therapeutics, veterinary medicine, dermatology, protozoology, malacology, mycetology, entomology -while also leaving his mark on the study of parasitosis of wild and domestic animals, leprosy, ancylostomiasis, yellow fever, tuberculosis, and skin and intestine diseases, among others.

From 1893 to 1908, he was placed in charge of Instituto Bacteriológico do Estado de São Paulo, achieving distinction as having the most experienced and best prepared crew among a still relatively elite group of doctors that, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, represented the vanguard of the process of instituting Pasteurian and “tropical” medicine, and employing it for the benefit of public health.

Although they share much common ground from a cognitive and institutional point of view, these medicines possess their own goals and dynamics, and often encompass very distinct research methodologies and academic traditions. Schematically, Pasteurism focused, above all, on investigating the bacterial agents of diseases, the biological methods of converting them into immune serums and vaccines, and the chemical means of curing or preventing these diseases. Tropical medicine per se was geared towards the study of subjects with worms and bacteria, the intermediary hosts that spread the diseases caused by these organisms in humans and animals.

Aside from his demanding laboratory work and his activities as a public figure, in this second stage of his career, Adolpho Lutz conducted important research in the fields of bacteriology, epidemiology and medical zoology, particularly on entomology and parasitology.

In 1908, when he was more than 50 years old, Adolpho Lutz joined the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (IOC), abandoning the São Paulo Institute, which would close down shortly afterwards. It was in Manguinhos that he embarked on the third stage of his professional life, when he realized his aspiration to dedicate his time entirely to research, and not necessarily in the field of medicine, which he did until his death in Rio de Janeiro on October 6, 1940, just a few weeks before his 85 th birthday. Thanks to his old age, this stage, which he began late in his life, was actually longer than the previous

two combined. 75

In the following pages, the reader will find the first papers published by Adolpho Lutz. They represent the first steps in an extraordinary journey into knowledge of life and mankind; and which is fully documented in the volumes of the Collected Works by the publishers who prepared this presentation and who wish you an enjoyable read!

 

Notes

1 Biographical data were found in Enciclopédia Delta Larousse (1975), volumes 2, 9 and 14; in Lutziana, recorded by Bertha Lutz and, above all, in Lauterburg (1862, p.269-84).

2 Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was the leader of a revolutionary group in Italy that fought for the expulsion of foreign governments, the abolition of absolutism and transformation of the península in a federative republic. This program inspired similar groups that fought for Young Poland, Young Germany, Young Switzerland etc.