Mattei's Electro-Homeopathy (electrohomeopathic remedies)

Five unlabeled colors of secret plant 'electricities,' sold only through Count Mattei's own licensed depots, claimed to cure disease generally -- including cancer -- by a proprietary electric force no outside chemist is documented as having verified.

No proving, chemical analysis, or controlled trial of Mattei's remedies accompanied his claims; the evidence he offered was his own testimonial and that of sympathetic physicians such as R. M. Theobald, his English translator, who reported a single uncontrolled recovery from 'marasmus' under the remedies after 'ordinary homoeopathic treatment' had failed (Theobald, preface to Electro-homoeopathic Medicine, 2nd ed., 1891). Writing in the homeopathic profession's own literature, E. W. Berridge assessed the case directly: Theobald had not published the details needed to show the prior homeopathic remedies were even correctly matched to the case, so the report showed only 'that certain unknown remedies cured after other unknown remedies had failed' -- no evidence at all for Mattei's system specifically (Berridge, 'Matteism -- The Latest Craze,' The Homoeopathic Physician, 1888). Berridge assessed Mattei's founding theory itself as erroneous, noting that Mattei supplied no provings of his remedies and even claimed they produced no effect on the healthy -- which Berridge called 'a glaring absurdity' for anything claiming a specific medicinal action. A separate institutional catalogue description of a surviving Mattei medicine chest (1871-1885) records that the system was, in its own time, dismissed by the medical profession as quackery even though popular, and that mainstream medicine had generally moved past Mattei's ideas by the 1930s (Wellcome Images object description). No source in this bundle documents a controlled study, of any era, supporting the specific claim that 'electricities' selected by Mattei's method cure disease. On the present-day successor: at least one Indian organization, Naturo Electro-Homoeopathy Medicos of India (NEHM of India), continues to teach and sell a namesake 'electropathy'/'electro-homeopathy' practice, naming Mattei as founder (NEHM of India, 'About Electropathy,' indiaelectropathy.org, accessed 2026). Separately, the Bombay High Court, ruling directly on a different diploma-granting electropathy institution in 2001, held the practice unrecognized as a system of medicine in India or, addressing the founding claim by name, anywhere else in the world including Italy, where it is said to have been discovered in 1865 -- ordering the closure of that institution's courses (Electropathy Medicos of India (Central Board) v. State of Maharashtra, Bombay High Court, 2001). A 2024 Allahabad High Court judgment allowed certificate-holders to practice Electro Homeopathy as an alternative therapy in Uttar Pradesh while it remained unbanned, but held that no institution could confer a diploma or degree and practitioners could not use the prefix 'Doctor.' The searches run for this case did not surface a peer-reviewed clinical trial of the modern practice.