Matteism -- The Latest Craze
clinical paper · 1888
LINK
SUMMARY
Contemporaneous critical review by London homeopathic physician E. W. Berridge, published in the homeopathic profession's own journal The Homoeopathic Physician. Identifiers confirmed via the Europe PMC REST API (EXT_ID:37135449): PMID 37135449, PMCID PMC9711455, journal 'The Homoeopathic physician' (NLM ID 0011762), volume 8, issue 11, pages 560-566, dated 1888 Nov. Full text fetched directly from the Europe PMC fullTextXML REST endpoint (JATS XML, open access, PMC-digitized back issue). Berridge assesses Mattei's founding pathological theory as erroneous (so 'all cures made in accordance with it must be accidental'), notes Mattei supplied no provings and claimed no pathogenetic action on the healthy (calling this 'a glaring absurdity'), and specifically dismantles the one detailed case Theobald's preface offered as evidence (a 'marasmus' recovery), showing it demonstrates nothing about Mattei's remedies specifically because the prior homeopathic treatment's correctness was never established. He also mocks the name 'Electro-Homoeopathy' itself as a spurious-sounding coinage, on the model of electroplate being an imitation of solid plate.
NOTES
The primary contemporaneous professional disconfirmation source for this case: a homeopathic physician’s own published rejection of Mattei’s system, in the profession’s own journal literature.
url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/PMC9711455/fullTextXML
fetched_at: 2026-08-05T08:40:00Z
quotes:
- "as it happens that this pathological theory is erroneous, the system based thereon must be erroneous also, and all cures made in accordance with it must be accidental"
- "he states that they have no pathogenetic action on the healthy, which is not only a glaring absurdity, but an actual fallacy"
- "it merely shows that certain unknown remedies cured after other unknown remedies had failed"