Cesare Mattei

Count Cesare Mattei (11 January 1809 - 3 April 1896) was an Italian nobleman, politician, writer and self-taught medical practitioner. He is best known as the founder of electrohomeopathy, a 19th-century alternative medical system that combined homeopathy, herbal preparations, alchemical language and claims concerning bodily or vegetal electricity.

Born in Bologna into a wealthy family of Ferrarese origin, Mattei was among the founders of the Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna in 1837 and briefly took part in the political life of the Papal States during the revolutionary period of 1848. In 1847 he and his brother Giuseppe received the hereditary title of count from Pope Pius IX after donating family holdings near Comacchio to the Papal States.

Early life, education and political career

Cesare Mattei was born in Bologna on 11 January 1809, the son of Luigi Mattei and Teresa Montignani. His family, of Ferrarese origin, belonged to the wealthy local bourgeoisie and owned property in the areas of Bologna, Budrio and Comacchio. Vannini argues that this formation helps explain the later mixture of empirical, speculative and symbolic elements in Mattei's intellectual profile.

The official Rocchetta Mattei site describes the castle as a labyrinth of towers, monumental staircases, reception rooms and private chambers combining neo-medieval, neo-Renaissance, Moorish and Liberty style elements. The castle became the architectural setting most closely associated with Mattei's public image and with the later memory of his electrohomeopathic enterprise.

The official visitor itinerary preserves several elements reflecting Mattei's taste for historical quotation and symbolic staging. The Cortile dei Leoni is inspired by the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra, and its decorative tiles include the Torre della Visione, which also became the logo of Mattei's medicaments. The Sala della musica is presented as evidence of the Mattei family's musical interests and of documented relations between the family and Gioachino Rossini. The tomb of Mattei, installed in the chapel in accordance with his testamentary wishes, includes astral inscriptions referring to the immensity of the universe and the smallness of human life.

The courtyard of Rocchetta Mattei, the eclectic castle built by Mattei on the ruins of the Rocca di Savignano.

Family, cultural networks and succession

Mattei's family and private networks were closely connected with the later development of his medical activity, his castle and his estate. His mother, Teresa Montignani, died after a long illness. Treccani states that her death probably played an important role in strengthening Mattei's distrust of official clinical medicine and in directing him towards homeopathy and medical experimentation.

His brother Giuseppe Mattei was central to the family background of the Rocchetta. Giuseppe married Carolina Brunetti, whose family owned land in the Savignano area. According to the Archivio Museo Cesare Mattei, this connection may have contributed to Cesare Mattei's discovery of the site where he later built the Rocchetta. Luigi Mattei later became central to the inheritance crisis surrounding Cesare Mattei's estate.

Mattei never married.

In 1889, when Mattei was about eighty years old, Maria Bonaiuti was born from his relationship with Maria Albina Bonaiuti, known as Agrippina, the housekeeper of the Rocchetta. Despite this, Mattei maintained Mario Venturoli as his universal heir, while recommending in his wills that Maria should be treated with particular care as his daughter.

In 1894 Venturoli married Sofia Condescu, a Romanian woman. The following year, in the context of Mattei's old age and growing conflicts around the inheritance, the count accused Condescu of attempting to poison him with Turkish coffee, expelled both her and Venturoli from the castle and disinherited them.

The preparation of the remedies was deliberately secret. Gliddon's 1892 manual stated that their manufacture followed the medieval doctrine of the spagyrics and that the way of combining different series of plants into individual remedies was Mattei's own discovery and "remains his secret".

The remedies were used both internally and externally. Gliddon's manual described globules taken dry or dissolved in water, as well as baths, gargles, injections, compresses and salves made from the remedies. The "electricities" were chiefly applied externally to painful parts or nerve points, but could also be taken internally in drops on sugar or in water.

Distribution

Mattei's system had considerable popular success in Italy and abroad, especially in France and Germany.

Later homeopathic criticism also attacked the identity of the system itself. An 1899 article in The Homoeopathic Recorder, titled "The Mattei Humbuggery", described electrohomeopathy as a revived and commercially advertised offshoot rather than orthodox homeopathy, and criticised the secret and compound character of the remedies.

In the English-speaking world Mattei's remedies became associated with what later historical literature called the "Mattei cancer cure". Joseph O. Baylen examined the phenomenon in his 1969 article "The Mattei Cancer Cure: A Victorian Nostrum", published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.

British public interest was also stimulated by the journalist W. T. Stead, who published the article "Can Cancer be Cured? A Visit to Count Mattei: His Challenge to the Faculty" in the January 1891 issue of The Review of Reviews.

The same documents refer to a Protocollo d'oro ("Golden Protocol"), described by Mattei in a letter to Cesare Fava as a dossier intended to complete a European plebiscite in favour of electrohomeopathy and to be displayed on the walls of a "new room" (stanza Nova). Zagnoni and Vannini identify it as a precious file of documents signed by people who supported Mattei's electrohomeopathy or reported favourable results from it. They also note that, although the dossier appears to have existed, it has not been found.

Archival records relating to Mattei's estate were later incorporated into the papers of the Ospizio dei vecchi settuagenari after the inheritance was accepted by royal decree in 1905. The series, now held by the State Archive of Bologna, contains correspondence, inheritance documentation, accounting papers and miscellaneous material relating to Mattei's life and activities.

The later memory of Mattei is preserved through several local institutions and collections. The Archivio Museo Cesare Mattei A.P.S. describes itself as a historical and cultural committee founded in 1997; it states that from 2000 it began a recovery effort aimed at collecting material relating to Mattei, the Rocchetta and electrohomeopathy, and that its archive-museum now includes thousands of artefacts. The association has also published or reprinted works connected with Mattei and his legacy, including reprints of Emancipazione dell'uomo dal medico and the Vero Vade-Mecum dell'Elettromeopatia, as well as a printed edition of Istoria di un assassino, described by the association as a previously unpublished manuscript written by Mattei and preserved in its collection. The Museo Cesare Mattei, founded by the Gruppo Studi Cesare Mattei in 2019, includes material relating to electrohomeopathy, Mattei, Mario Venturoli-Mattei and Rocchetta Mattei, including remedies, manuscripts, publications, laboratory components, photographs, furniture and personal objects.

Cultural references

Mattei's international notoriety is reflected in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov. In the chapter "The Devil. Ivan's Nightmare", the devil appearing to Ivan Karamazov says that he wrote to "Count Mattei in Milan", who sent him "a book and some drops".

In 2019 Mattei was the subject of Il conte magico, a documentary film directed by Marco Melluso and Diego Schiavo and produced by Genoma Films. The film, supported by the Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, recounts the life of Cesare Mattei and the history of Rocchetta Mattei through a mixture of documentary and fictional elements.

Works

Mattei published several works explaining and promoting his system, many of which were translated into European languages. La scienza nuova del conte C. M. e la scienza vecchia del dott. C, Casale Monferrato, 1878. Vade-mecum della elettromeopatia, Nice, 1879. Elettro-omeopatia: nuovo vade-mecum, Bologna, 1883; later editions through 1937. Scienza nuova: storia dell'elettromiopatia, Bologna, 1892.