The article intends to shed some light on the creation of the Manguinhos laboratory by recounting an episode which predates it: the journey to Santos taken in 1899 by Oswaldo Cruz, a young physician about to become a national hero and the Brazilian symbol of science. Destined to confirm the arrival of the infamous bubonic plague in Brazil for the first time, this journey was a milestone in justifying construction of a factory to produce anti-plague serum in Rio de Janeiro - the future Instituto Soroterápico Federal, inaugurated in 1900 and later embryo of the Manguinhos laboratory. Four different narratives of this journey reveal different processes of ‘creating the world’, each arriving at its own interpretation of the same journey.
Sciences and Technology Studies (STS) and the Third World; health and technology; technology studies; history of science; sociology of science