Guiseppe Belluomini 1776 - 1854

Guiseppe Belluomini (Anglicised to Joseph Belluomini) (Belloumini) 1776 - 1854 was an Italian orthodox physician who trained in medicine in Pisa and Vienna, and then converted to homeopathy.

Belluomini was physician Charles II Duke of Parma (then Duke of Lucca) in 1846 (Anon, The American Homeopathist Volumes 1-2, (Smith & Worthington, 1865). Page 126), and Maria Malibran was also a patient of Guiseppe Belluomini, as she had known him from childhood. Belluomini was also a friend of Frederick Ponsonby 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and Frederick Hervey Foster Quin,

In England, Belluomini was on the Medical Council of the London Homeopathic Hospital and a member of the British Homeopathic Association.

William Charles Ellis applied to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin for more information about homeopathy, and as a result, Frederick Hervey Foster Quin sent him his colleagues Guiseppe Belluomini, Harris F Dunsford, and Paul Francois Curie to assist him at Hanwell Lunatic Asylum at William Charles Ellis’s invitation. (note Charles Augustus Tulk 1786 - 1849, a close colleague of  James John Garth Wilkinson, was Chairman of the Hanwell Asylum in the 1840s ref: The Swedenborg Society: a very short history by Richard Lines Company Secretary and past President of the Swedenborg Society.)

Belluomini pursued a Diplomatic and a Political career in the Republic of Lucca from 1799 to 1815, when he was exiled from Vienna and came to London. By 1832, he was practicing as a homeopathic doctor in London, where he was a friend of Thomas Carlyle.

Belluomini came to England to practice homeopathy  in 1832, shortly before his colleague Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, and a member of the British Homeopathic Association alongside Harris F Dunsford, John Epps, William Kingdon, Thomas Uwins, William Kingdon, Hugh Cameron, William Headland, Dendy and Edward Hamilton.

Paul Francois Curie then came over to England and British homeopathy had begun.

Guiseppe Belluomini practiced at 47 Great Marlborough Street.

Maria Malibran died aged 28 causing a storm of protest against homeopathy. One report claims she died after a terrible fall from her horse. Guiseppe Belluomini administered to her but she could not be saved, but as he was a homeopath, Guiseppe Belluomini was viciously attacked, as was her husband who had called him in to see his wife.

The attacks ignored the injuries Maria Malibran received and did not mention the fall from the horse, one such said she was simply over exhausted from her travels, and opting not to mention that Guiseppe Belluomini was a well qualified doctor and physician to Charles II Duke of Parma (then Duke of Lucca).

Another report claims that Malibran was hysterical on stage with a mysterious illness before continuing on to report that Guiseppe Belluomini and Maria Malibran’s husband had to flee for their very lives as the allopathic physicians described the cause of death as a nervous fever.

Such erroneous reports were widely circulated, and it was widely reported that allopathic physicians bled her after her last stage performance, which is why her husband sent for her old friend Guiseppe Belluomini.

Another reported rumours that Maria Malibran drank too much and that reports of an illness were a ‘sham’ or cover up for this, and that she had fallen downstairs and refused any doctors. Another report claimed that she was in the early stages of pregnancy.

Eventually it emerged that Maria Malibran was a celebrated horse rider, who loved to gallop away from her attendants. This report mentioned that she had over exerted herself by perfoming and been bled by allopathic physicians, and when Guiseppe Belluomini arrived, he was so alarmed he called for a surgeon. William Lewis arrived immediately and pronounced her in extreme danger and she died the following night.

Such attacks simply rested on defaming Guiseppe Belluomini without any reference to the facts, and so Guiseppe Belluomini wrote an account of her death for the newspapers.

Again Guiseppe Belluomini was attacked in the London Medical Gazette for saying ’weak and silly things’ as Guiseppe Belluomini described how he had treated a fever and cough. The _London Medical Gazette_ ’assumed Malibran had an inflammation of the lungs’ and that Guiseppe Belluomini simply allowed her to die.

Thereafter, Belluomini returned to the Republic of Lucca.

Belluomini died in Turin.

Belluomini translated into Italian Hahnemann’s Treatise on Chronic Diseases, and he wrote Scarletina.