METHUSELAH ARCHIVE CLAIMS
Claim · 1865 · Mattei's Electro-Homeopathy (electrohomeopathic remedies)

Disease is cured by 'electricities' -- an undefined electric force contained in secret plant liquids, distinguished from one another only by color -- restoring a vitiated balance of blood and lymph.

Mattei’s own explanation of his central term was that his plant-derived liquids — “mysterious liquids, which baffle analysis, act with remarkable power and promptitude” — possessed an inherent electric force he called “electricities,” coming in five named colors (red, yellow, blue, white, and green) with no further public specification of composition or mechanism (Gliddon, Stepping Stones to Electro-Homoeopathy, 8th ed., 1930, quoting Mattei, p.62). No source in this bundle documents the mechanism being disclosed for independent chemical or physiological testing; Mattei’s own texts state that the liquids act at the point of contact “with electric speed,” a claim offered without instrumentation or measurement of any kind. E. W. Berridge, reviewing the system in the homeopathic profession’s own literature, identified a specific internal contradiction: Mattei supplied no provings of the remedies and stated they produced no effect on the healthy, which Berridge called “a glaring absurdity” for any substance credited with a distinct medicinal action, and concluded the underlying pathological theory was erroneous, so that “all cures made in accordance with it must be accidental.” No source in this bundle documents that Mattei’s “electricities” were ever chemically characterized, or that the vitiated-blood-and-lymph theory underlying them was tested against the germ-theory and cellular-pathology understanding of disease already developing elsewhere in the medical science of his own era.

Sources

  1. Stepping Stones to Electro-Homœopathy (Count Mattei's System of Medicine), 8th edition — Gliddon, A. J. L. Stepping Stones to Electro-Homœopathy (Count Mattei's System of Medicine). 8th ed. London: Count Mattei's Remedies, 1930. Wellcome Collection, Medical Collection WB930 1930G56s.
  2. Matteism -- The Latest Craze — Berridge, E. W. "Matteism -- The Latest Craze." The Homoeopathic Physician 8, no. 11 (November 1888): 560-566. PMID 37135449; PMCID PMC9711455.