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Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 86, Number 2, Summer

2012, pp. 153-177 (Article)

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DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2012.0039

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bhm/summary/v086/86.2.vimieiro-gomes.html

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 “Too Good to Be True”:
The Controversy over the Use of
Permanganate of Potash as an Antidote
to Snake Poison and the Circulation of
Brazilian Physiology in the Nineteenth
Century
ana carolina vimieiro gomes

Summary: This article examines an international controversy over the most visible
scientific event of Brazilian physiology in the nineteenth century. In 1881, Brazil-
ian scientist João Baptista Lacerda stated that he had found an efficient antidote
to the poison of Brazilian snakes: permanganate of potash (nowadays, potassium
permanganate). His findings were given great publicity in Brazil and traveled
rapidly around the world. Scientists, especially in France, contradicted Lacerda’s
claims. They argued that permanganate of potash could not be a genuine anti-
dote to snake bites since it could not neutralize snake venom when diffused in
the body. Lacerda turned down such criticism, claiming that clinical observation
provided solid evidence for the drug’s local action, on the spot surrounding the
bite. The controversy over the use of permanganate of potash as an antidote to
snake bite illustrates different regimes of proof that could be mobilized in favor
of a physiological discovery.

Keywords: experimental physiology, therapy, scientific controversy, clinical

medicine, circulation of science, viper poison, history of science in Brazil

In early August 1881 a Brazilian scientific discovery, the “neutralization

of snake poison virus through hypodermic injection of permanganate
of potash,” reached the pages of the French medical periodical Journal
d’Hygiene. The new treatment was developed by João Baptista Lacerda

This paper could not have been written without the insightful and dedicated help of
Ilana Löwy, to whom I am thankful. The study was supported by FAPEMIG, CAPES, and
CNPq, Brazil.

153  Bull. Hist. Med., 2012, 86  : 153–177

154 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

at the Experimental Physiology Laboratory of the National Museum of

Rio de Janeiro. It was presented in Brazil as a major scientific achieve-
ment, not only because of its great practical value, but also because it was
grounded in a careful scientific study. “This breakthrough,” the author of
the Journal d’Hygiene article explained, “was not the effect of empiricism or
mere hazard; it originated in various scientific studies and physiological
experiments.”1 International interest in this discovery elevated Lacerda’s
status in Brazil. Many people viewed the new therapy as the beginning of
the development of experimental science in Brazil. Lacerda’s scientific
achievement was publicized as having universal significance, and João
Baptista Lacerda himself was even compared to Pasteur.2
The acceptance of Lacerda’s innovative finding in Brazil was neverthe-
less not a self-evident achievement. By the late nineteenth century, there
was in Brazil broad official support of the development of experimental
science, reforming medical education, and creating research laborato-
ries. The goal was to promote the discovery of efficient treatments for the
most frequent health problems in Brazil.3 This development mirrored the
Western trend of applying physiology to solving medical problems. Medi-
cine, many nineteenth-century experts believed, should be grounded on
experimental medicine and focused on the understanding of the physi-
ological and pathological body processes, and should therefore acquire a
status close to that of a basic science.4 Acknowledgment of the validity of a
therapy occurred either through an empirical demonstration of its clinical
efficacy or, alternatively, on the basis of theoretical considerations—that
is, evidence, properly established, of the therapy’s reasonability and its
concurring with accepted scientific principles, or a demonstration of the
efficacy of new therapies in controlled conditions in a research laboratory.
Despite the fact that many Brazilian physicians remained suspicious of

1. Journal d’Hygiene, August 11, 1881.

2. Jornal do Commercio, April 1, 1882. That article highlights the imperial government’s
role in Brazilian scientific and intellectual enhancement.
3. Flávio Coelho Edler, “A medicina brasileira no século XIX: um balanço historiográ-
fico,” Asclepio L-2 (1998): 169–86. See also Flávio Coelho Edler, As reformas do ensino médico
e a profissionalização da medicina na Corte do Rio de Janeiro 1854–1884 (master’s diss., FFLCH/
USP, São Paulo, 1992); Jaime L. Benchimol, Dos Micróbios aos mosquitos. Febre amarela e a rev-
olução pasteuriana no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Fiocruz, 1999), 498.
4. Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794–1848 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1967); Georges Canguilhem, Ideologie et rationalité dans l’histoire des
sciences de la vie (Paris: Vrin, 1993); John Harley Warner, “From Specificity to Universalism
in Medical Therapeutics: Transformation in the 19th-Century United States,” in Sickness and
Health in America, 3rd ed., ed. Judith W. Leavitt and Ronald L Numbers (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 87–101.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 155

therapies grounded in laboratory studies, the two patterns of validation

of therapies, experimental and clinical, coexisted in Brazilian medicine.5
Assertions regarding the efficacy of a given treatment chiefly relied on
thorough observation of clinical cases. The experimental approach was
employed mainly in studies presenting human risk: investigation of com-
plex surgical procedures, study of the effects of toxic substances (such
as snake venom) in the body, and attempts to neutralize poison via drug
injection. The two major empirical patterns of therapy evaluation, the
clinical one and the experimental one, were unstable and prone to criti-
cism. Disagreements on the outcome of clinical study brought divergence
on diagnosis and the efficacy of symptom control in patients, while debates
over laboratory study focused on the validity of experimental systems and
research methods as well as their transference into human medicine.
Lacerda’s discovery was initially legitimated by the experimental
approach. However, in the second half of nineteenth century, contribu-
tions from experimental physiology to medical practice in Brazil were
rare, and many physicians, including members of the Brazilian Academy
of Medicine, were skeptical about the efficacy of that approach. Brazilian
debate on the medical uses of permanganate of potash was grounded on
heated local discussions on the effectiveness and importance of therapies
originated in basic and experimental science. Physicians taking part in
those debates discussed the ideal existence of universal principles govern-
ing therapy use and the possible articulation of science-based approaches
with those from bedside medical practice.6 At the same time, the exis-
tence of a strong utilitarian reasoning in Brazilian medicine favored an
immediate transfer from laboratory experimental physiological study of
permanganate of potash to its application, in drug form, in treating snake
bite victims. The main acknowledgment of the new therapy’s efficacy came
not from theoretical considerations or experimental evidence but from
testimonies about its successful use by physicians and, occasionally, by lay

5. Flávio Edler, “O debate em torno da medicina experimental no 2º Reinado,” História,

Ciência e Saúde Manguinhos 2 (1996): 284–300.
6. On the value of experimental science for medical practice in nineteenth-century
France and America, see Georges Weisz, The Medical Mandarins: The French Academy of Medi-
cine in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),
esp. chap. 7; John Harley Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Practice, Knowledge and
Identity in America (1820–1885) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); Guenter
B. Resse, “The History of Therapeutics,” in “Essays in the History of Therapeutics,” Clio
Medica 22 (1991): 3–12; John Harley Warner, “Ideals of Science and Their Discontents in
Late Nineteenth-Century American Medicine,” Isis 82 (1991): 454–78; and Gerald L. Geison,
“Divided We Stand: Physiologists and Clinicians in the American Context,” in Leavitt and
Numbers, Sickness and Health in America (n. 4), 115–29.
156 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

people. News of the recently discovered treatment for snake bite traveled
rapidly around the world and led to an international controversy over
the priority of the alleged discovery as well as the physiological effects of
permanganate of potash treatment in humans.
This work draws on historical studies of the struggle to validate innova-
tive therapeutic knowledge in Western medicine and extend these studies
to Brazil.7 It investigates how local scientific, cultural, and professional
values accumulated in defining the evaluation pattern of the therapeutic
properties of permanganate of potash and its effectiveness in medical
practice. Its aim is to trace back the strategies deployed in circulating this
purportedly successful therapy throughout Brazil and, as a consequence,
also worldwide. It also investigates the role of political, social, and eco-
nomic interests in debates on the efficacy of permanganate of potash.
Those debates, this text shows, were not identical in Brazil and Europe.
An analysis of the history of permanganate of potash as snake venom anti-
dote sheds some light on the circumstances of international validation of
medical knowledge that originated in non-Western countries in the late
nineteenth century. Such an analysis underpins differences between dis-
tinct patterns of validation of medical discoveries. It also calls attention to
the importance of physiology in the development of Brazilian medicine.8
By focusing on physiology, this article aims to fill in a void left by his-
torians who have studied the rise of medical knowledge in Brazil in the
late nineteenth century. Historians have privileged the development of
bacteriology and parasitology and have focused on the history of attempts
to identify new pathogenic agents, the development of vaccines, and other
therapies for local infectious diseases as well as efforts to understand and
define tropical disorders. While João Baptista Lacerda and the laboratory
of physiology at National Museum were often presented as leading forces
in emergence of physiology in Brazil,9 historical studies have seldom paid

7. On this debate in the French academy, see Weisz, Medical Mandarins (n. 6), 159–88.
Also, in the U.S. context, see Warner, Therapeutic Perspective (n. 6); Gerald L. Geison, “Divided
We Stand” (n. 6).
8. On the role of experimental physiology and therapeutic knowledge in the search for
new therapies in Western countries, see, e.g., John Harley Warner, “Therapeutic Explanation
and the Edinburgh Bloodletting Controversy: Two Perspectives on the Medical Meaning of
Science in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Med. Hist. 24 (1980): 241–58; Warner, “Ideals of Sci-
ence and Their Discontents” (n. 6), 454–78; and Geison, “Divided We Stand” (n. 6), 115–29.
9. José Ribeiro do Valle, “Alguns aspectos da evolução da Fisiologia no Brasil,” in História
das ciências no Brasil, ed. Mario Guimarães Ferri and Shozo Motoyama (São Paulo: EDUSP,
1979), 151–73; Thales Martins, “A Biologia no Brasil, episódios de sua história,” in As ciências
no Brasil, ed. Fernando de Azevedo (São Paulo: Ed. Melhoramentos, 1955), 2:201–59; Mario
Vianna Dias, “Lacerda fisiologista,” in Museu Nacional: publicações avulsas n° 6, João Batista
Lacerda: comemoração do centenário de nascimento (1846–1946) (Rio de Janeiro: Departamento
de Imprensa Nacional, 1951), 41–61.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 157

attention to the important role of experimental physiology in the rise of

the nineteenth-century medical culture in this country.10 Jaime Benchimol
wrote the pioneering analysis of Lacerda’s experimental researches on
snake venom and his discovery of the use of permanganate of potash as a
snake poison antidote. Benchimol’s account examined Lacerda’s investi-
gations, placing them in the context of the reception of Pasteur’s theories
in Brazil.11 Despite similarities in theme and sources, this article offers a
different interpretation of permanganate of potash episode by contextu-
alizing it in the history of Brazilian experimental physiology rather than
situating it in the circulation of Pasteurian theories and practices.

The Rise of Brazilian Experimental Physiology in the Late

Nineteenth Century
In the second half of the 1870s, experimental physiology became a model
for developing Brazilian biomedical sciences. Those taking part in debates
on the reform of medical education called for an increase in experimental
studies and the creation of laboratories. At first, physiological research was
mainly carried out by physicians in their own private clinics rather than
in public institutions, such as laboratories in medical schools.12 The first
institutionalized site of physiological research in Brazil was the Experi-
mental Physiology Laboratory of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro,
founded in 1880. Its creation reflected some of the government’s efforts
to expand scientific activities at the National Museum. The new role of the
museum was defined as being one of “studying natural history, chiefly of
Brazil, and teaching natural and physical sciences, above all those related
to agriculture, industry and the arts.”13 The government provided funds
for reorganizing sections inside the National Museum and furthering its
collections. The museum hired foreign scientists and started publishing
the periodical Archivos do Museu Nacional, which attained worldwide cir-
culation. The directors of the museum also organized courses in natural
sciences, botany, zoology, geology, anthropology, and mineralogy, each

10. J. G. Peard, “Tropical Disorders and the Forging of a Brazilian Medical Identity,
1860–1890,” Hisp. Amer. Hist. Rev. 77 (1997): 1–42; Flávio Coelho Edler, “A Escola Tropical-
ista Baiana: um mito de origem da medicina tropical no Brasil,” História, Ciências, Saúde-
Manguinhos 9, no. 2 (2002): 357–85.
11. See Benchimol, Dos Micróbios aos mosquitos (n. 3), 180–85.
12. Information on initiatives to develop experimental medicine in Brazil during that
period is found in Julyan G. Peard, Race, Place and Medicine: The Idea of the Tropics in Nineteenth-
Century Brazilian Medicine (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999). On experimental
medicine in medical reforms, see Edler, “O debate em torno” (n. 5), 284–300.
13. Ministry of Agriculture, decree no. 6116 (1876).
158 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

corresponding to a section of the museum. The National Museum was

regarded as a privileged site for the development of natural sciences in
Brazil. The museum’s rich collections made possible prolific scientific
output, and its directors strived to gain worldwide circulation of the results
of research carried out in their institution. The museum was also known
for its multiple exchanges with foreign scientists and scientific institu-
tions around the world.14 The opening of a physiological laboratory at
the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro was part of an effort to enhance
the scientific status of the institution.
The Laboratory of Experimental Physiology was officially established
in the early 1880s with special funds from the Ministry of Agriculture. It
benefited also from the support of imperial authorities.15 It was planned,
organized, and supervised by a young French physiologist, Louis Couty,
alongside Brazilian physician João Baptista Lacerda. Couty had been hired
by Emperor Pedro II as the chair of industrial biology at the Polytechnic
School in Rio de Janeiro. Lacerda had already worked in the anthropologi-
cal, zoological, and ethnographic section of the National Museum of Rio
de Janeiro, and since 1876 he had conducted physiological investigations
on vegetal toxins and snake venoms.
Soon after his arrival in Brazil, Louis Couty became interested in
experimental physiology. After a visit by the emperor and the minister
of agriculture to the museum in order to witness experiments on the
effects of curare in dogs, Couty and Lacerda succeeded in persuading
these authorities of the advantages of opening a special laboratory dedi-
cated to experimental physiology. The aim was to carry out investigations
privileging national themes. The laboratory’s organization, practices, and
equipment reproduced Western models of physiology.16 The Ministry of
Agriculture provided a grant of 13,260 francs for importing instruments,
apparatuses, books, and periodicals from France for the new laboratory.17
Its researchers, Couty, Lacerda, Manuel Sallas, Eduardo Guimarães, and
Juvenal Raposo, focused on vivisection procedures, the deterministic
understanding of natural phenomena, and the graphic method of regis-
tering bodily functions.18

14. M. M. Lopes and I. Podgorny, “The Shaping of the Latin American Museums of
Natural History, 1850–1990,” Osiris 15 (2001): 108–18.
15. The Republican regime was proclaimed in Brazil nine years later in November 1889.
16. On Western experimental physiology, see, e.g., W. Coleman and F. Holmes, The Inves-
tigative Enterprise: Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1988), 1–14.
17. Letter of the Ministry of Agriculture to the director of the National Museum (Museu
Nacional, BR MN. DR. CO, December 5, 1879).
18. Letter of the Minister of Agriculture, Manuel Buarque Macedo, to the Minister of
Brazil (Ambassador) in France, Visconde de Itajubá. The money was granted to the Brazilian
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 159

The Experimental Physiology Laboratory conducted studies on national

themes: the physiological and nutritional effects of local substances (sugar
cane alcohol, coffee, herb mate [a popular drink in Brazil], dried meat,
manioc), selected medicinal plants,19 the mechanism of action of poisons
such as curare and snake venom, the effects of the tropical climate on
humans and animals, and studies on brain physiology (using monkeys’
brains). Couty claimed that, in addition to their scientific relevance,
some of the investigations conducted in the experimental physiology
laboratory—such as studies on the physiological and nutritional effects
of coffee, herb mate, and dried meat—played an important role in the
Brazilian economy and favored trade relations with Europe. In order to
ensure some room for experimental physiology in Brazil, researchers at
the National Museum foregrounded, at the same time, scientific and prac-
tical interests in their studies. The economic interest of the studies from
the physiology laboratory explains the interest of the Brazilian elite in this
laboratory and the financial support from the Ministry of Agriculture.20
In some cases, researchers at the physiology laboratory combined
approaches borrowed from several disciplines—experimental physiology,
pathological anatomy, microbiology, clinical observations, and chemical
analyses—a strategy that allowed them to enlarge the circle of profession-
als who showed an interest in their approaches.21 A comparison of investi-
gations based on the specific environment and natural resources of Brazil
with those carried out in Europe helped to value studies conducted locally.
Lacerda, Couty, and their colleagues circulated the results of their studies
among members of important Western scientific institutions, such as the
Academie des Science de Paris and the Societé de Biologie, and strived
to publish them in renowned periodicals such as Archives de Physiologie
Normal et Pathologique in France and the Lancet in England.

legacy in London, and the laboratory items were bought in Paris, at Maisons Mariauds, Doin
Libraries, and Charles Verdin, all suppliers of medical material and laboratory instruments
in France (Museu Nacional, BR MN. DR. CO, January 5, 1880).
19. On the traditional use of medicinal plants as therapies in Brazil and its relation to
scientific medicine, see Tania Maria Fernandes, Plantas medicinais: memória da ciência no Bra-
sil (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Fiocruz, 2004); and Fernando S. D. dos Santos and Luiza O. Dias,
“Medicina popular e medicina científica no Brasil oitocentista: o uso de plantas medicinais,”
Latinidade. Revista do Núcleo de Estudos das Américas 1, no. 1 (2008): 61–71.
20. Imperial Ordinance, December 14, 1880; “Instructions for the Experimental Physiol-
ogy Laboratory Service at National Museum,” in Annual Report to the Ministry of Agriculture
(Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional, 1880–1881), A4, 3–4.
21. Weisz, Medical Mandarins (n. 6), xvi.
160 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

João Baptista Lacerda and His Studies of Snake Venom

João Baptista Lacerda developed an interest in the toxic effects of plants
and poison during his early studies in experimental physiology. His first
experiments in the area were based on Claude Bernard’s understanding
of the importance of studying the action of poison as a tool for learning
fundamental physiological mechanisms.22 Lacerda similarly stressed the
importance of physiological investigations on mechanisms of action of
toxic substances. “Recent applications of experimental method in toxico-
logical problems,” he argued, “impose on experimenters a strict obligation
to investigate the intimate action of poisons. By starting from changes in
one or more body elements, through them, according to physiological
laws, we can explain the dynamic consequences they produce and the
ways they are translated into several functional disorders.”23
One of the earliest topics explored by Lacerda was the mechanism of
action of curare, a poison previously studied by Claude Bernard. Lacerda
analyzed the way Brazilian Indians prepared this venom, typically anointed
on their hunting arrows. He confirmed Bernard’s conclusions about the
paralyzing action of curare. Lacerda disagreed, however, with Bernard’s
view of curare as a mixture of several toxic substances and suggested that
the toxic effects of curare might result from the presence of a single sub-
stance derived from a Brazilian plant, strychnos.24
Later, Lacerda studied the poisonous properties of the bodily secretion
extracted from the frog Bufo ictericus, known as the “Brazilian frog.” The
aim of this study was to compare toxins of Brazilian and European frog
species. Lacerda’s first question was whether the poison from the Bufo
ictericus was a heart-paralyzing poison like the one of the European spe-
cies Bufo vulgaris. If this indeed were the case, the next question would
be whether the intensity of the toxic effects of the Brazilian species was
comparable to that of poison from European species, and whether the
two sorts of poison would act in the same way. Lacerda concluded that the
poison from the Brazilian frog gradually affected the body by first acting
on the skeletal muscles and only later by acting on the heart. Its action was
therefore different from that of Bufo vulgaris, shown by Claude Bernard
to paralyze the heart first.25

22. Claude Bernard, “Études physiologiques sur quelques poisons americaines,” in La

science expérimentale (Paris: Libraire J. B. Baillière et fils, 1878), 237.
23. João Baptista Lacerda, “Investigações experimentaes sobre a acção do veneno da
Bothrops jararaca,” Archivos do Museu Nacional 2 (1877): 1–17, quotation on 1–2.
24. João Baptista Lacerda, “Acção physiologica do urari,” Archivos do Museu Nacional 1
(1876): 37–43.
25. João Baptista Lacerda, “Algumas experiências com o veneno do Bufo Ictericus, Spix
(Crapaud du Brésil),” Archivos do Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro 3, no. 5 (1878): 33–39.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 161

Lacerda and his colleagues looked forward to dialogue with other West-
ern physiologists. They also hoped to shed light on particular features of
Brazilian plants and animals. The tropical environment and the unique
natural resources in Brazil secured the scientific relevance and innovative
quality of their investigations. Late-nineteenth-century Brazilian medical
and scientific discourses stressed the importance of research on local
issues. The emphasis on the Brazilian tropical environment was linked
to the effort to promulgate a nation-building ideal by means of science,
to raise the population’s sociocultural level, and to fulfill the promise of
progress and civilization made by the Brazilian government.26
Lacerda’s main topic of study was snake poisons. He studied venoms
extracted from the most common Brazilian species, including rattlesnakes
(Crotalus horridus), jararaca (Bothrops jararaca), urutu (Bothrops alternatos),
and jararacuçu (Bothrops jararacussu). At that time, snake bites were com-
mon in Brazil. According to Lacerda, the occurrence and symptoms of
poisoning in human beings and animals were noticed by popular heal-
ers and described by naturalists traveling around the country. However,
those descriptions did not contribute to a better understanding of the
mechanisms of venom action. A physiologist’s role, Lacerda believed, was
to study such an action and to explain disturbances in body functions
induced by the venom by applying physiological laws.27 Since he employed
experimental methods in order to understand the effects of poison in
the body, Lacerda viewed himself as a more advanced scientist than most
Brazilian physicians of his time.28
In Lacerda’s early studies of rattlesnakes and jararaca, venom was per-
ceived as a sort of ferment, similar to bacteria or yeast. By mixing physi-
ological, pathophysiological, and microbiological approaches, Lacerda
claimed that he had found poisonous germs in the blood of a bitten
animal and “micrococcus” in his microscopic observations of the poison.
This observation, he believed, explained “the organized destruction [of
the body], triggering putrefying chemical phenomena” and inflammatory
responses. He also claimed that local injection of alcohol acted on these
“ferments” by nullifying their toxic effect.29 These results were presented at
the Academie des Science de Paris by the French anthropologist Armand
de Quatrefages. After the presentation of Lacerda’s findings, Quatrefages

26. On Brazilian medicine and the study of tropical diseases, see Peard, “Tropical Dis-
orders” (n. 10); also see Peard, Race, Place and Medicine (n. 12).
27. Lacerda, “Investigações experimentaes” (n. 23), 2.
28. João Baptista Lacerda, “Sobre o veneno da Crotalus horridus,” Archivos do Museu
Nacional 3 (1878): 51–88.
29. Ibid., 51–58.
162 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

criticized the presumed “fermentative properties” of snake poison and

explained that the conclusions presented by Lacerda left room for “severe
objections.”30
As Louis Couty had joined Lacerda at the experimental physiology
laboratory at the National Museum, the view of snake venom as “ferment”
was gradually phased out. Couty, who had been trained as a physiologist
in Paris, was acquainted with the accepted principles of physiological rea-
soning. Under his direction, the focus of research on snake poison shifted
toward the study of specific physiological mechanisms. The purpose was to
explain the action of toxins on organisms and the cause of animal deaths.
In their studies of Bothrops venom, Couty and Lacerda demonstrated
that “the venom acted sometimes on one system, sometimes on another;
however, death was always preceded by the complete paralysis of the
brain encephalon, with the stiffening of limbs, falling of the tension, the
acceleration of the animal’s heart rate and the loss of medullar reflexes,
when sympathetic neurons were stimulated.”31 In concluding this set of
investigations, they raised the hypothesis that snake venom produced
inflammatory injuries like pathogenic agents did, which represented a
new class of toxic substance, “different from poisons of viruses.”32

Permanganate of Potash as an Antidote to Snake Venom

In early 1881, the Imperial government asked Louis Couty to promulgate
Brazilian agricultural products in Europe as well as to conduct experi-
ments together with the French army on the nutrition value of mate infu-
sion and dried meat. Couty had gone there also to present their studies
at French scientific institutions.33 Couty’s studies focused on curare and

30. In João Baptista Lacerda, “Venin des serpents,” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des
Séances de l’Academie des Sciences T 86 (1878): 1093–95. It is worth noting the fact that Qua-
trefages was a French anthropologist, a member of the Academie des Science de Paris and,
like some of his fellow French scientists, he often corresponded with Emperor Pedro II.
At that academy, studies were presented after given approval by both the president and at
least one member. We can thus spot how Emperor Pedro II played a role in publicizing
Brazilian physiology studies.
31. Louis Couty and João Baptista Lacerda, “Sur l’action du venin du Bothrops jararacu-
ssu,” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Academie des Sciences 89 (1879): 372–75,
quotation on 373.
32. Louis Couty and João Baptista Lacerda, “Sur la difficulté d’absorption et les effets
locaux du venin du Bothrops jararaca,” Compte Rendu Academie de Science 91 (1880): 549–51;
Louis Couty, “Sur la nature inflammatoire des lésions produites par le venin du serpent
bothrops,” Compte Rendu Academie de Science 92 (1881): 468–70; Louis Couty and João Bap-
tista Lacerda, “Sur l’action des venins,” Compte Rendu Societé de Biologie 33 (1881): 214–18.
33. Letter of Louis Couty to Pedro II, Arquivo da Casa Imperial, March 6, 1881.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 163

brain physiology. During Couty’s journey to Europe, João Baptista Lac-

erda was named temporary director of the physiology laboratory. As a
consequence, studies of snake poisons again became the main research
topic in that laboratory.
Soon after he took over the laboratory, Lacerda stated he had found
an efficient antidote for snake venom, namely, permanganate of potash.
According to him, that drug, which had been previously used as a disin-
fectant or an antifermentative agent, was able to neutralize venom’s effects
in the human body. Lacerda stated he had examined several substances
popularly reckoned as having therapeutic properties, used by “quack doc-
tors” and credited with the so-called capacity to neutralize snake poison.
These were plant extracts, such as the extract of “lizard’s herb” (Calea
pinnatifida) (a popular Brazilian plant used as a remedy), fat, ammonia,
chloral (trichloroacetaldehyde), horn (from any animal), and mercury.
When studied in the laboratory and submitted to scientific testing, none
of these traditional therapies was able to neutralize the toxic effects of
snake venom.34 By contrast, permanganate of potash demonstrated effi-
cacy under controlled laboratory conditions. Experiments on dogs had
shown that, after infusion of jararaca snake poison in tissues and blood,
the subsequent subcutaneous or intravenous application of 1 percent
permanganate of potash solution “annulled its effects, first by preventing
local phenomena from manifesting, next by making the rapid disappear-
ance of general phenomena easier.” Dogs fully recovered their normal
physiological functioning.35
Lacerda soon undertook his discoveries with the National Museum
director, Ladislau Netto, who officially informed the imperial authorities
on the important outcome from the Experimental Physiology Labora-
tory. For Netto, this was the “most far-reaching discovery for the benefit
of humankind” made within that laboratory. He added that the credit for
those findings “belongs largely to the government, who had encouraged
this establishment, rather to the one under whose direction it was.”36
Those inside the Ministry of Agriculture proceeded with caution, though.
They required that most renowned members of the Brazilian Academy
of Medicine and Rio de Janeiro’s School of Medicine evaluate Lacer-
da’s experiments and write a report on their findings. In the minister’s

34. João Baptista Lacerda, O veneno ophidico e os seus antídotos (Rio de Janeiro: Lombaerts,
1881), 5–27; and João Baptista Lacerda, Leçons sur le venin des serpents du Brésil et sur la méthode
de traitement des morsures venimeuses (Rio de Janeiro: Libraire Lombaerts, 1884).
35. Lacerda, O veneno ophidico (n. 34), 64.
36. Letter from National Museum director to the Ministry of Agriculture. Museu Nacio-
nal (BR MN. DR. CO, 20, July 6, 1881).
164 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

opinion, this was necessary in order “to attend to the government’s image,
since the laboratory was a public establishment and its work had an offi-
cial status.”37
In July 11, 1881, Emperor Pedro II and other imperial authorities vis-
ited the Experimental Physiology Laboratory in order to watch experi-
ments being carried out there and also to listen to a speech by Lacerda,
written especially for the occasion, whereby he would announce “the
outcome regarding all snake poison antidotes known to date, including
the antidote he himself had recently found out.”38 A “theatre of proof”
was put on before the imperial authorities to enhance the credibility of
Lacerda’s discovery. The event was widely publicized in Rio de Janeiro’s
press. One month before Lacerda’s public demonstration of the efficacy
of permanganate of potash in Brazil, Louis Pasteur had announced, in
France, the outcome of the Pouilly le Fort experiments.39 Like Pasteur,
Lacerda attempted to consolidate his discovery by showing nonscientists
what happened inside the laboratory.40
A few years later, Lacerda provided a dramatic description of the “impe-
rial experiment,” and the emperor’s reaction to the “convincing results”
after the injection of the supposed antidote in a dog:
Five minutes later the convulsion ceased, some heat returned to bodily extremi-
ties, the heart started to beat again, and breath movement was restored to its
normal rhythm. The dog lifted its head and opened its eyes. When set from
the table onto the floor, it walked across the laboratory.
While all this was going on, the emperor, who was talking to the minister, sud-
denly stopped talking and, following the animal with his eyes, could not hide
his wonder.
“Enough, there’s no more need,” he said. “I am satisfied.”41

37. Report from the Ministry of Agriculture (Arquivo Nacional, IE7 67, 1881; July 8, 1881).
38. Jornal do Commercio, July 11, 1881. The emperor’s visits to the Experimental Physiology
Laboratory were often written about in Rio de Janeiro’s press, chiefly the Jornal do Commercio.
39. Gerald L. Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1995). Pasteur’s nephew Adrien Loir would later reveal that an antiseptic—dichro-
mate of potash—had in fact been employed to attenuate the anthrax bacteria. Adrien Loir,
À l’ombre de Pasteur (Paris: Edition Le mouvement sanitaire, 1938). One may note that the
antiseptic properties of both substances, dichromate of potash and permanganate of potash,
are produced through the liberation of oxygen in chemical reactions with organic materials.
40. On the notion of the theater of proof, see Bruno Latour, Pasteur: guerre et paix des
microbes. Suivi de Irréductions (Paris: La Découverte, 2001), 140–52.
41. João Baptista Lacerda, Fastos do Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro. Recordações históricas
e científicas fundadas em documentos autênticos e informações verídicas (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa
Nacional, 1905), 108–34.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 165

A day after the imperial visit, a Rio de Janeiro newspaper, Jornal do Com-
mercio, published an article summing up the experimental procedure as
it had been developed by Lacerda. It reported the visit of Pedro II, the
minister of agriculture, and “educated and affluent people, physicians,
medical school teachers, members of the foreign diplomatic corps, etc.” to
the Experimental Physiology Laboratory, in order to witness the extraor-
dinary results of Lacerda’s experiments.42 Through newspaper articles, an
educated audience in Rio de Janeiro took part in witnessing the efficacy
of permanganate of potash.
Lacerda’s findings were presented as a national achievement, which
would soon become universal as well. At that time, the colonial govern-
ment of India had offered a reward of a hundred thousand pounds to
scientists who could find an antidote to viper poisoning, an important
public health care issue in India. There were more than twenty thousand
deaths from viper bites in India, Lacerda reported, a fact that underlined
the scientific importance of his discovery and its utility to humankind.
Lacerda believed that he was entitled to receive the Indian government’s
award.43 The director of the National Museum, Ladislau Netto, suggested
imperial intercession in order to secure the award for Lacerda. The award
would “honor the Museum and the Brazilian science” and provide inter-
national acknowledgment for Lacerda’s discovery.44 As a sign of honor for
his “dedication to science,” Lacerda was offered, by the imperial govern-
ment, the “Ordem da Rosa” medal, which was usually awarded to those
who had provided important services to the empire. An article in Jornal
do Commercio voiced the hope that, by being acclaimed for his discovery,
“the young scientist could be encouraged to make new attempts” in order
to discover other important scientific findings.45
In the 1880, the major public health problems in Brazil were endemic
and epidemic diseases such as yellow fever and smallpox. Recurring out-
breaks of these diseases affected the country’s agricultural exports and
trade, as well as the flow of European immigrants coming to work in the
Brazilian coffee farms.46 From a public health point of view, Lacerda’s

42. “Imperial Visit,” Jornal do Commercio, July 12, 1881.

43. Lacerda, Leçons sur le venin (n. 34), 166–68.
44. Letter from the National Museum’s director, Ladislau Netto, to the Ministry of Agri-
culture (BR. MN. DR.CO. 20, July 9, 1881).
45. Jornal do Commercio, July 13, 1881. The quick diffusion of medical discoveries in
1880s Brazil can be compared to the similar popular discoveries of the sort achieved in the
nineteenth-century United States. Bert Hansen, “New Images of a New Medicine: Visual
Evidence for the Widespread Popularity of Therapeutic Discoveries in America after 1885,”
Bull. Hist. Med. 73, no. 4 (1999): 629–78.
46. Gilberto Hochman, “Priority, Invisibility and Eradication: The History of Smallpox
and the Brazilian Public Health Agenda,” Med. Hist. 53 (2009): 229–52; Sidney Chalhoub,
Cidade febril: cortiços e epidemias na corte imperial (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996).
166 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

discovery had but limited importance. His work was celebrated in Brazil,
not only because of its immediate practical importance but also, and per-
haps above all, because it was viewed as a pioneering use of experimental
physiology practices to enhance universal therapeutic knowledge. This
successful use of experimental practices was seen as an important advance
for the Brazilian medical science.47
The wide publicity given to Lacerda’s discovery in the Brazilian press
led to its appropriation by physicians and lay people, who began to use
the new antidote in their therapeutic practice. In August 10, 1881, the
Jornal do Commercio published a letter by Captain Luiz Ribeiro de Souza
Rezende and his brother-in-law Manuel da Mota Teixeira, who reported
the successful use of permanganate of potash on one of their slaves.48 It
was stated in the letter that a few hours after two antidote injections into
the vicinity of the bite and the ingestion of one glass of the antidote, “the
victim did not have any sign of illness, not even minimal leg swelling”; he
just limped. This was the first successful “experiment” carried out on a
human being. For the application of permanganate of potash in human
beings, one did not rely on procedures as developed in the physiology
laboratory, but grounded oneself in empirical observation from clinical
practice, the main method of evaluating the therapeutic value of drugs
in Brazilian medical community by that time.49 Luiz Ribeiro de Souza
Rezende ended his letter by proclaiming, “Bravo! Congratulations to Dr.
Lacerda, whom we all praise. I have been the first to use permanganate
of potash here, and consider myself the first to use this Dr. Lacerda’s
wonder on human being.”50
In the months after this public announcement of the antidote efficacy
in human beings, the Brazilian press, mainly Gazeta de Notícias and Jornal
do Commercio, repeatedly reported the miraculous properties of perman-
ganate of potash in healing poisonous snake bites. Another “theatre of
proof” was staged in the press. Countless correspondents sent their tes-
timonies of the antidote’s efficacy to newspapers all over the country. In
some of these testimonies, symptoms of poisoning and the healing pro-
cess were described in detail. One of those, Dr. Alfredo Alves Matheus,
a judge from Cabrobó (in the state of Pernambuco), wrote in March 28,
1882, to Jornal de Recife,

47. Journal d’Hygiene, August 11, 1881.

48. The law (named “Lei Áurea”) through which slavery was banned in Brazil was finally
signed on May 13, 1888.
49. Weisz, Medical Mandarins (n. 6), 173.
50. Jornal do Commercio, August 10, 1881.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 167

I have just got another snake bite healed. A 14-year-old boy had been bitten
on his right leg, close to his ankle, by a jararaca snake. Three hours later, I
put some permanganate of potash onto the wound, according to Lacerda’s
procedure. Before that, the victim showed the following symptoms: headache,
dizziness, chest pain, and numbness in the affected leg. All of it vanished after
the antidote, the only remaining symptom being some inflammation close to
the bite, which is also to vanish with time.51

Physicians, surgeons, pharmacists, and lay people who purchased

permanganate of potash at the nearby pharmacy kept reporting on the
successful use of this substance in neutralizing snake venom. Most of the
reported accidents took place in the countryside, on farms, and at rail-
road construction sites. The victims were often workers and slaves, with
bites on their hands, feet, ankles, and legs. The efficacy of the antidote
was not limited to the jararaca snake poison—the only species employed
in Lacerda’s experiments. Permanganate of potash was also reported to
provide an efficient treatment for bites of other common venomous Bra-
zilian snake species: the rattlesnake, urutu, and surucucu.52
To ensure an unvarying therapeutic application of permanganate of
potash, and also to make the use of the drug in human beings as close as
possible to its laboratory use, Lacerda diffused guidelines across all Brazil-
ian provinces in which he described the correct way to use this antidote on
victims of poisonous snake bites. In addition, portable kits, made in Berlin
by Romain Talbot and ordered by Lacerda, were sold in Rio de Janeiro.
Each box contained a special syringe (Pravaz) and a bottle with enough
drug for one hundred applications. Its price was forty shillings per kit with
a higher quality syringe and, alternatively thirty-two shillings per kit with
a somewhat inferior syringe.53 News about Lacerda’s discovery traveled
rapidly abroad, and the same guidelines of application of “Prof. Lacerda’s
procedure” were disseminated in French, English, Dutch, and Spanish.54
Lacerda’s method was applied to humans, without experimental proofs
of its therapeutic benefits, and even without evidence that the injection
or the ingestion of permanganate of potash was a harmless procedure.
A few critics at first frowned at such a hasty employment of laboratory

51. Gazeta de Notícias, April 25, 1882, in João Baptista Lacerda, “Factos clínicos sobre o
veneno ophidico,” n.p. This quotation is from the notebook in which Lacerda kept a record
of most clinical fact sheets, besides comments on his findings.
52. Lacerda, “Factos clínicos sobre o veneno ophidico” (n. 51), n.p.
53. Ibid., n.p.
54. João Baptista Lacerda, Les morsures des serpents venimeux du Brésil et le permanganate de
potasse: Faits cliniques recueillis par le docteur Lacerda (Rio de Janeiro: Lombaerts, 1882), 187;
Lacerda, “Factos clínicos sobre o veneno ophidico” (n. 51), n.p.
168 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

findings in clinics: “[W]e are not dogs, for God’s sake!”55 In response,
Lacerda stated that the obvious distinction between human beings and
dogs was not an issue since ophidian poison did not act differently in ani-
mals than in human beings.56 The “structure and chemical composition
of superior zoological species is the same as inferior ones”; therefore, “if
the conditions are the same, the outcome is also the same.”57 Owing to
testimonies in the press generally and also in medical periodicals, Lacerda
was able to garner numerous clinical proofs about the use of his method
in treating snake bites. For him, such successful treatments were the
most important evidence of the drug efficacy. In the 1880s, the efficacy
of permanganate of potash as an antidote to snake poison was presented
in Brazil as an irrevocable scientific fact.

“Too Good to Be True”: An International Controversy

News about Lacerda’s findings traveled fast throughout the international
scientific community. Dr. Richard Gumbleton Daunt, an Englishman,
wrote an article from Brazil to the British journal Medical Times and Gazette,
in July 1881, just after the Brazilian press announced the discovery:
Too good to be true?—Snake Poison
To the editor of Medical Times and Gazette
Sir—The journals of Rio de Janeiro give news that has rarely been exceeded
in interest. Permanganate of potash is the infallible antidote to the poison
of serpents. The discoverer is a Brazilian physician—Dr. John Baptist Lac-
erda—attached to the National Museum of Natural History of Rio de Janeiro.
Repeated successful experiments, positive and negative, have been performed
by him in the presence of His Majesty the Emperor Peter II, first scientist and
first litterateur of the Empire: and there is said to be no doubt felt in Rio as to
the thorough truth of the discovery. I am not aware of the doses in which the
permanganate is applied and if it is employed by hypodermic injection or by
the mouth.58

55. Jornal do Commercio, August 21, 1881.

56. The move to an animal experimental model—as well as its value—in the practices in
clinical medicine was an important scientific issue in nineteenth-century French physiology,
especially in Claude Bernard’s studies. See, e.g., Claude Bernard, Introduction à l’étude de la
médecine expérimentale, 6th ed. (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1865), 157–59.
57. João Baptista Lacerda, “O permanganato de potassa como antídoto da peçonha de
cobras,” União Médica 1, no. 9 (1881): 514–19.
58. A journal clipping in Lacerda’s notebook concerning the repercussions of the dis-
covery, in Lacerda, “Factos clínicos sobre o veneno ophidico” (n. 51), n.p.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 169

That was one among several doubts voiced concerning the use per-
manganate of potash as an antidote to snake venom. Also in England, in
an article published in the Lancet, physician Vincent Richards, a member
of Indian Snake Poisoning Commission, contested the proposed use of per-
manganate of potash as an antidote to viper bites in India. After carrying
out “thirty experiments with cobra poison and permanganate of potash,”
Richards assumed that different snake poisons had also different mecha-
nisms of toxic action, so that one could tell, from experiments using the
same kind of poison Lacerda used in his studies, what the drug’s effects
on venom from other (Indian) snakes would be.59 Lacerda replied, also
in Lancet, that his conclusions were based on clinical evidence indicating
that local application of permanganate of potash neutralized the bites
of various species of Brazilian snakes.60 Lacerda’s results were contested
in France as well. An article published in the Journal d’Hygiene (August
11, 1882) called for verification of Lacerda’s claims by scientists from the
Collège de France and Museum d’Histoire Naturelle.61
The main opposition to Lacerda’s findings was voiced in an exchange
of letters published in the British newspaper the Times in October and
November 1881, and in early 1882 debates at the Academie des Science
de Paris. The Times exchange focused on the priority of Lacerda’s dis-
covery, and its practical value. The Times published five notes on this
topic. The first of those, signed by “a Brazilian,” reported the “sure
efficacy” of the drug. It also presented the outcome of experiments on
animals and human beings, “which should be sufficient and conclusive
evidence,” according to the view of the author of that letter. The follow-
ing day, a reader identified as “F.R.C.S.” (a member of the Royal College
of Surgeons, London) wrote that those statements were “calculated to
do mischief by leading persons who may be near those who are bitten by
poisonous snakes to waste time in the application of a reputed remedy,
the uselessness of which has been proved over and over again.” The cor-
respondent said that Lacerda “was not original in suggesting the possible
utility of the permanganate of potash.” His main novelty was the claim
about the efficacy of the substance. Nevertheless, the drug had been
tested earlier by other scientists, namely Fayer and Brunton, whose results
showed the “inutility of permanganate.” “A Brazilian” answered, in turn,
pointing out the possible methodological differences between Fayer and

59. Vincent Richards, “Permanganate of Potash and Snake Poison,” Lancet 7 (1882): 35;
Vincent Richards, “M. De Lacerda’s Experiments,” Lancet 11 (1882): 252.
60. João Baptista Lacerda, “Permanganate of Potash and Snake-Poison,” Lancet 6 (1882):
761.
61. Journal d’Hygiene, August 11, 1882.
170 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

Lacerda’s studies. He rejected F.R.C.S.’s charges that the snakes employed

in Lacerda’s experiments were not sufficiently poisonous. The snakes Lac-
erda used in his experiments were “the most poisonous snakes we have in
Brazil.” F.R.C.S. responded by accusing the “Brazilian” of having found
it difficult to “relinquish a belief which he humanely desires to be [the]
truth” because “the crucial test was the recovery of the people supposed
to have been bitten; whereas, in a large number of carefully conducted
experiments, it has been shown that the injection of permanganate of
potash, even instantly after a really venomous bite, and the additional
precaution of placing a ligature around the limb above the injury, has
been powerless to avert the fatal issue.”62
Another British physician, Bollman Condy, contested Lacerda’s claims
of priority. In his letter to the Times, Condy maintained he was the first
to find out the therapeutic use of permanganate of potash, more than
twenty years before Lacerda’s announcement. He employed this drug
not only to treat snake poisoning but also to protect against the effects of
other “ordinary offensive products,” like “all rabid and diseased animals.”63
Singapore’s daily journal, the Strait Times also questioned the priority
of Lacerda’s discovery. An “effectual and certain” use of permanganate of
potash, a Strait Times article claimed, had been found out by Mr. Knaggs,
who had reported his findings to India’s government in June 1881: “[I]t
would be inflicting a great wrong that Mr. Knaggs should have the credit
of priority of a discovery filched from him in the cold and contemptuous
manner apparently attempted by the French Minister and his friend M. de
Lacerda.” Both were accused of ignoring Knaggs’s prior findings regard-
ing a flawless remedy. According to the Strait Times, the French minister
of public instruction allowed the publication of Lacerda’s finding as a
new and important discovery in the Compte Rendus de l’Academie des Science
de Paris, despite the fact that he knew about Knaggs’s earlier findings.64
The controversy at the Academie des Science de Paris did not deal with
priority issues but focused on the scientific validity of Lacerda’s findings.
More than the drug’s efficacy, at stake was the theoretical explanation of
Lacerda’s results. The controversy had begun after the second presenta-
tion by the French anthropologist Armand Quatrefages (member of the
anatomy and zoology section) on properties of permanganate of potash as

62. Times, October 28, 1881; Times, October 29, 1881; Times, November 1, 1881, in Lac-
erda, “Factos clínicos sobre o veneno ophidico” (n. 51), n.p.
63. Times, November 2, 1881, in Lacerda, “Factos clínicos sobre o veneno ophidico”
(n. 51), n.p.
64. Strait Times, November 28, 1881, and November 29, 1881, in Lacerda, “Factos clínicos
sobre o veneno ophidico” (n. 51), n.p. It is curious that Lacerda was referred to in the note
as a “French savant.”
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 171

an antidote for snake poison in human beings. His aim in that presenta-
tion was to safeguard the international validation of Lacerda’s discovery
by drawing on “facts collected in different locations within the Brazilian
territory” that would indicate that the local injection of permanganate of
potash was a “healing method” capable of “immediately halting, without
a doubt” the lethal effect of ophidian venom. Quatrefages reported that
Lacerda also claimed that permanganate of potash could cure “some dis-
eases whose cause Mr. Pasteur revealed us,” that is, infectious diseases.65
After Quatrefages’s presentation, other members of the academy pro-
posed creating a committee comprising scientists such as Louis Pasteur
(in the mineralogy section), Armand Quatrefages himself, Edmond Fremy
(in the chemistry section), and Henry Bouley (in the rural economy sec-
tion) to evaluate the efficacy of Lacerda’s method.66
Data presented in Quatrefages’s reports were contested in two other
presentations at the Academie des Science de Paris: one by the French
physiologist Alfred Vulpian, the other by the director of the Experimental
Physiology Laboratory at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Louis
Couty. Couty’s strong criticism on Lacerda’s permanganate of potash
studies mirrors their conflictual personal relationship and dispute over
scientific credit. The personal quarrel reached the Brazilian press, where,
after Couty’s criticism, Lacerda admitted “the tension in the formerly
good relationship between my current opponent and myself,” because
of obvious differences in their character.67
After reproducing some of Lacerda’s experiments on dogs, Vulpian
maintained that the permanganate of potash was efficient if employed
in the area surrounding the wound shortly after the snake bite. He
explained that one may assume that, in that case, the salt blended with
the snake poison would decrease its toxic effects. However, the efficacy
of the drug was no longer certain if the venom spread beyond the area
surrounding the bite and away from swelling spots. Moreover, Vulpian
stated that subcutaneous and intravenous injection of permanganate of
potash was useless. The drug could even have toxic effects if employed a
few hours after the bite or after the poison had penetrated tissues or blood
and spread throughout the body.68 Vulpian believed that there were no

65. Armand Quatrefages, “Note sur Le permanganate de potasse, consideré comme

antidote du venin des serpents, à propos d’une publication de M. J. B. De Lacerda,” Comptes
Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Academie des Sciences 94 (1882): 488–90.
66. Ibid., 490.
67. Jornal do Commercio, June 7, 1882, and June 8, 1882.
68. Alfred Vulpian, “Études expérimentales relatives à l’action que peut exercer le per-
manganate de potasse sur les venins, les virus et les maladies zymotiques,” Comptes Rendus
Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Academie des Sciences 94 (1882): 613–17.
172 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

clear-cut boundaries between medicament and poison, for, depending on

the dose applied, “some medicaments could become poisons, and, vice
versa, some poisons could become medicaments.” He did not deny the
role of clinical studies in humans in research of the mechanism of action
of therapeutic agents. However, he believed that in order to fully eluci-
date such mechanism it was important to investigate “overall changes in
life functions,” and to follow them step-by-step, “from the moment of the
substance introduction” to “the moment it reaches its highest intensity.”
It was also necessary to conduct studies in several distinct animal species,
to employ “histological, chemical and physiological methods,” and to
examine changes in “the anatomic elements or the fluids produced by the
studied substances, as well as the nature and degree of such a change.”69
Lacerda often responded to his opponents in the mainstream news-
papers Gazeta de Noticias and Jornal do Commercio. His attitude indicated
that the controversy on the efficacy of permanganate of potash was not
restricted to the academic medicine but had reached the public sphere
as well. In these texts Lacerda presented the “more than 40 genuine
clinical facts” as his main proof of the efficacy of the drug. These “clini-
cal facts” included data on species of snakes for which the antidote was
efficient and the length of time between the bite and the application of
the drug application during which the treatment was reported to work.
These clinical data, Lacerda underlined, had been collected by physi-
cians all over Brazil. He stressed, “What more valuable and convincing
evidence of efficacy could we want than those which have been given to
us as repeated clinical cases reported to the press by trustful persons?” In
countering Vulpian’s criticism, Lacerda claimed that, in science, “there are
two distinct elements which need to be taken in to account: the fact and
its interpretation.” Once a fact was established, one must accept it: “The
observation of healing after the venom spread seems perfectly reasonable,
but even if they were not, that is not enough ground to contest them.”70
In his presentation to the French Academy of Science, Louis Couty
agreed that “well-conducted experiments . . . do not give room to doubts
about the action of permanganate of potash against non-absorbed
venom” and added that this result showed great practical importance.71
His main argument was, however, that permanganate of potash was not

69. Alfred, Vulpian, Leçons sur l’action physiologique des substances toxiques et médicamenteuses
(Paris: Octave Doin Éditeur, 1882), xxxi, 3, 11–12.
70. Gazeta de Notícias, April 24, 1882, in Lacerda, “Factos clínicos sobre o veneno
ophidico” (n. 51), n.p.
71. Jornal do Commercio, July 7, 1882, in Lacerda, “Factos clínicos sobre o veneno ophidico”
(n. 51), n.p.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 173

a “physiological antidote.” Couty’s argument was based on physiological

experiments with dogs in which he injected intravenously snake poison
and permanganate of potash. Lacerda himself, Couty stated, would have
witnessed those experiments. Couty’s results, like those of Vulpian, showed
that the drug “does not bring the effects of the poison to a halt if venom
has reached the blood stream or various tissues.” Thus, “permanganate
of potash had been recommended as a therapeutic agent against poison-
ous snake bites without valid experimental proof.”72 Couty rebutted the
statement, as put forth by Quatrefages in his presentation, that he himself
would have witnessed and backed up Lacerda’s experiments. He believed
that the results obtained by Lacerda were not sufficiently well grounded
and his conclusions were precipitated.73
Lacerda attempted later to respond to Couty’s and Vulpian’s criticism
of him by providing an alternative physiological explanation. It is not
possible, he claimed, to find out a specific physiologic antidote to an
ophidian poison, as that type of snake poison “attacks all bodily parts.”
Permanganate of potash was efficient precisely because it was not specific.
It had “a chemical action of direct neutralization” and locally modified
the nature of poison. Lacerda’s other line of defense was the claim that
Couty’s experiments were not congruous with “normal and natural” con-
ditions, in which people “were usually victims of just one bite.” His main
argument was, however, that the “simple theoretical considerations” of
his opponents did not undermine the validity of his discovery, soundly
grounded in clinical data. Lacerda stated, “[T]o say that permanganate
of potash is not a physiologic antidote because the results were negative
under such-and-such experimental conditions, being very different from
those found in clinical conditions, does not affect the well-proved efficacy
of that substance as a way to stop the manifestation of toxic symptoms or
prevent the death of bitten individuals.”74
Lacerda’s main argument in favor of permanganate of potash was that
it worked. The theory behind his claims was the one according to which
“once contacting the snake poison, that chemical agent decomposes
itself and liberates some amount of oxygen; this element produces deep
changes in the venom, altering its properties and nullifying its effects.”75

72. Louis Couty, “De l’action du permanganate de potasse contre les accidents du venin
des Bothrops,” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Academie des Sciences 94 (1882):
1198–1201. Also see Louis Couty, “O permanganato de potassa contra mordedura de cobras,”
Gazeta Médica da Bahia 13, no. 12 (1882): 549–53, 557–58.
73. Jornal do Commercio, July 7, 1882.
74. Jornal do Commercio, July 8, 1882.
75. João Baptista Lacerda, O veneno ophidico e os seus antídotos (Rio de Janeiro: Lombaerts,
1881), 35.
174 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

Lacerda’s study was entirely practice oriented. The survival and rapid
recovery of laboratory animals bitten by a snake then injected with this
substance and later the descriptions of the disappearance of the toxic
effects of venom in people who underwent treatment provided sufficient
evidence for permanganate of potash’s efficacy. Lacerda’s main oppo-
nents, such as Vulpian and Couty, were not satisfied with such a level of
proof. Their skeptical reception of the clinical evidence collected by Lac-
erda was grounded in theoretical considerations, their understanding of
physiological effects of permanganate of potash in the body, and observa-
tions of the mechanism of action of this substance in laboratory animals.

Conclusion: The Laboratory, the Clinic, and International

Circulation of Brazilian Experimental Physiology
The effort to present permanganate of potash as snake poison antidote
reflects the ambition to promote Brazilian experimental science as a
competent and successful enterprise among Western scientific communi-
ties. The discovery of a universal antidote to snake poisoning could have
potentially fulfilled this aim, especially since such an antidote could have
had important practical value in European colonies in the tropics, where
snake bites were viewed as an important health issue. Both Brazilian and
French scientists, as well as Brazilian physicians, the Brazilian press, ordi-
nary people, and even imperial authorities, including Emperor Pedro II
himself, became involved in initiatives aiming to promote the interna-
tional circulation of Brazilian experimental physiology. This broad enroll-
ment of various actors disclosed their desire to modernize the country
through the development of scientific activities. Such activities, Brazilian
authorities believed, promoted Brazilian social, political, and economic
development and enhanced the international image of Brazil as an
advanced and civilized nation.76 Experimental physiology was mobilized
to accomplish these goals.
The Brazilian debate on therapeutic effects of permanganate of potash
displayed the epistemological and practical challenges of application of
knowledge originating in the physiology laboratory for the validation of
new therapies. Controversy on the therapeutic effects of permanganate
of potash was not settled by appealing only to experimental physiology
methods. Brazilian physicians were suspicious of contributions of basic
science to bedside medicine.77 Simultaneous use of several kinds of scien-

76. Roy MacLeod, “Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise,” Osiris 15
(2001): 1–13.
77. Warner, Therapeutic Perspective (n. 6); Edler, “A medicina brasileira no século XIX”
(n. 3).
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 175

tific argumentation was thus required. Criteria mobilized to attest to the

therapeutic efficacy of permanganate of potash came from a combination
of theoretical reasoning, laboratory studies, and clinical observations. Lac-
erda put to the fore both the rhetorical appeal of successful application of
permanganate of potash to laboratory animals and the smooth transition
of this innovative practice to the treatment of humans. The simultane-
ous use of different justifications for the validation of his finding allowed
Lacerda to promulgate the contribution from experimental knowledge
to medical practice without threatening the ideal of clinical medicine,
hegemonic in Brazil at that time.78 His strong reliance on both scientific
and practical evidence probably stemmed from his medical education.79
Lacerda had been trained at the Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Medicine in the
1870s, when medical education was still firmly based in clinical tradition.80
The mingling of experimental and practical thinking when validating
the use of permanganate of potash in Brazil mirrored procedures usually
employed by nineteenth-century Western physicians in evaluating new
therapies: a mixture of approaches springing from laboratory studies, clin-
ical observation, and, sometimes, medical statistics.81 Lacerda mobilized,
at the same time, his experimental science reputation and the practical
value of clinical observation in order to sustain his discovery. In Brazil,
these two regiments of proof were mutually supportive. The success of this
therapy in Brazil displayed the local blend of different ways of evaluating
treatments and the strong contribution of the clinical tradition.82 Debates
at the French Academy of Sciences displayed the opposite logic. In these
debates, the feebleness of Lacerda’s experimental proof undermined
the validity of his clinical data. The assumption, made in laboratory, that
permanganate of potash could exert its action only locally and within a
short time after a snake bite weakened the reliability of testimonies that

78. On the influence of medical education on therapeutic controversies in Western

countries, see Warner, “Therapeutic Explanation and the Edinburgh Bloodletting Contro-
versy” (n. 8), 256–57.
79. Lacerda’s own strong reliance on practical evidence might have stemmed from
allegiance to his medical training: he studied medicine in Rio de Janeiro in the 1870s,
when medical education was strongly dominated by clinical tradition. Luiz Otávio Ferreira,
Maria Rachel F. da Fonseca, and Flávio Coelho Edler, “A Faculdade de Medicina do Rio
de Janeiro no século XIX: a organização institucional e os modelos de ensino,” in Espaços
da Ciência no Brasil 1800–1930, ed. Maria Amélia and M. Dantes (Rio de Janeiro: Editora
Fiocruz, 2001), 59–80.
80. Ferreira, da Fonseca, and Edler, “Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro” (n. 78).
81. Weisz, Medical Mandarins (n. 6), xvi.
82. Geison, “Divided We Stand” (n. 6); and Toby Gelfand, “11 January 1887, the Day
Medicine Changed: Joseph Grancher’s Defense of Pasteur’s Treatments for Rabies,” Bull.
Hist. Med. 76 (2002): 698–718.
176 ana carolina vimieiro gomes

maintained that the injection of the substance, even if long after the bite,
could still produce a cure.
The impossibility of demonstrating a coherent scientific explanation
for the activity of permanganate of potash seriously hindered efforts
to acknowledge this treatment as an important scientific innovation in
Europe. Permanganate of potash therapy was rejected by experimental
physiologists from the Academie des Science de Paris on the basis of both
theoretical and methodological assumptions, as well as experimental evi-
dence. Physiologists such as Couty and Vulpian viewed scientific knowl-
edge as a foundation for establishing therapeutic theory and believed
that fundamental physiological studies should provide scientific basis for
the effectiveness of a drug. Accordingly, they were above all interested in
experimental evidence that physiological changes produced by perman-
ganate of potash would explain the therapeutic action of the substance.
They failed to uncover such evidence. Moreover, their investigation
pointed out important contradictions between the effects of that drug
in the body, observed in laboratory animals, and reports of its presumed
efficacy in people bitten by snakes.
The history of permanganate of potash as an antidote for snake venom
did not conclude with the rejection of Lacerda’s scientific claims by some
Western scientists. In spite of the lack of consent on the physiological
effects of this substance, it continued to be widely used as an antidote for
snake venom by both physicians in Brazil and those in other countries.83
Brazilian studies on snake poisoning often cited João Baptista Lacerda’s
study as an outstanding reference work on the topic. In the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries American and British authors claimed to
have successfully treated people bitten by snakes with permanganate of
potash. The development of an efficient treatment for snake bites antive-
nous sera did not put an end to therapeutic applications of this substance,
but it radically changed its meaning. Once presented as a miraculous
antidote for all snake poisons, permanganate of potash ended up being
viewed as a local disinfectant of wounds. The French pioneer of studies
on sera against snake venom Albert Calmette explained that the use of
this substance was recommended only if “injected next to the wound at
the same time as or just after the venom inoculation.”84

83. Pedro Luiz N. Chernoviz, Dicionário de Medicina Popular, 6th ed. (Paris: Roger and
Chernoviz, 1890).
84. Albert Calmette, Le venin des serpents: Physiologie de l’envenimation, traitement des morsures
venimeuses par le serum des animaux vaccines (Paris: Société d’Éditions Scientifiques, 1896),
31–32; Albert Calmette, “Étude experimentale du venin de Naja Tripudians ou Cobra
Capel et exposé d’une méthode de neutralisation de ce venin dans l’organisme,” Annales
de l’Institute Pasteur 6 (1892): 160–83.
 Snake Poison Antidote and Brazilian Physiology 177

Nevertheless, for a long time permanganate of potash (renamed potas-

sium permanganate) was included among the substances applied to fresh
snake bites. Between 1900 and 1930, most first aid kits for rattlesnake bites
contained potassium permanganate.85 The disparity between the history
of permanganate of potash as an important scientific discovery and its
history as a useful drug points to differences between the two regimes of
validation of therapies, namely, the theoretical and the practical. It also
points to differences in the international reception of knowledge pro-
duced in a non-Western country. Lacerda’s scientific claims were rejected
by his physiologist peers in Europe. On the other hand, the rapid adop-
tion of permanganate of potash as a treatment for snake bites by medical
practitioners may indicate that it was much easier to validate and diffuse
practice-grounded medical knowledge.

ana carolina vimieiro gomes is a professor of the history of science in the

Department of History at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG),
Brazil.

85. Laurence Klauber, Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories and Influences on Mankind,
2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 923. The inclusion of permanga-
nate of potash in first aid kits intended for snake bites was gradually discontinued after
World War II.