When Oswaldo Cruz delivered the first hundred vials of vaccine and serum against the bubonic plague to the General Directorate of Public Health in October 1900, no one imagined that it would not be long before the Federal Serum Therapy Institute would be ready to produce substantial quantities not only of these products but also of a variety of other immunobiologicals used in the prevention and treatment of human and animal diseases. In seven short years, institute teams successfully added other products to the list: tuberculin, used in the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis; anti-diphtheria and anti-tetanus sera; mullein, used in the diagnosis of glanders; a vaccine against carbuncles; anti-streptococcal serum; and two invaluable veterinary products: the vaccines against chicken spirillosis and blackleg.
Discovered in 1907 and patented the following year, the blackleg vaccine became the institute’s chief source of revenue and allowed it to pay much of its staff out of its own pocket. It was also thanks to this vaccine that the Federal Serum Therapy Institute could open its first branch, in Belo Horizonte, inaugurated in 1906 under the direction of Ezequiel Dias.
When Cruz left his post as director in 1916, the institute was producing 21 different immunobiologicals, including anti-dysentery serum, introduced in 1911, and tartar emetic, produced since 1914. In 1915, the institute made 1,300,000 doses of vaccine against blackleg. In 1916 alone, an even greater amount of plague serum and vaccine was made: over 3,000,000 vials each.