The Rural School Group and the Butantan Institute: relations between experimental medicine and educational ruralism

Public research institutes in Brazil adopted the experimental medicine model as of the late nineteenth century. At the Butantan Institute [Instituto Butantan], the experimental perspective was a mark of Afrânio do Amaral's administration, between 1928 and 1938. Using the institution's own historical archive as its primary source, this study analyzes the Butantan Rural School Group [Grupo Escolar Rural de Butantan], understanding it as both a pedagogical experiment, an expression of the institution's experimental guidelines, and a model for the education movement implemented in the early 1900s by intellectuals and politicians from the state of São Paulo to mold a national identity based on "country man."