Giuseppe Mauro 1758 - 1853

Giuseppe Mauro 1758 - 1853 MD was an Italian orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy, aged 64 years, and after 36 years of practice, to become a pioneer in homeopathy and a major translator of homeopathic writing, and an Editor of Effemeridi di Medicina Omiopatica.

Mauro was converted to homeopathy by Georg von Necker in 1822/3, and he became a student of Samuel Hahnemann. At the age of 64, Mauro began to learn German so he could learn homeopathy more effectively.

Mauro was the homeopath of Henry William Paget, Marquess of Anglesey in 1834, Giordano III Fulco Ruffo di Calabria Santapau 1773 - 1852 in 1825, Julie Amalie Elisabeth von Voss, Countess von Ingenheim,

Mauro was a teacher of Guiseppe Tranchina, and he was a friend of Settimio Centamori, Heinrich A von Gersdorff, Cosmo Maria De Horatiis, Franz Xaver Kinzel, Innocenzo Liuzzi, Francesco Romani,

Mauro was a very distinguished pioneer of Homoeopathy in Italy. He sent his contribution to the Hahnemann Jubilee of 1829; his name appears in the Zeitung list of practitioners of Homoeopathy in 1832, and Frederick Hervey Foster Quin also mentions his name in his directory of 1834.

He was converted by Georg von Necker as early as 1822 or 1823. He was it that time a practitioner of Naples.

Dadea says: Giuseppe Mauro, whom Francesco Romani calls the virtuous, having reached his 64th year, and passed 36 years in he practice of Allopathy, in order the better to learn the new doctrine, and to master the original works of Samuel Hahnemann and his disciples, applied himself with youthful ardor and a diligence at so great an age to the difficult study of the German language.

He soon became conversant with this branch of scientific literature, and turned his great and precious acquisitions to the account, not only for his large number of patients, but also of his colleagues far and near, with a generosity and disinterestedness which have hardly been now in Italy by the followers of Samuel Hahnemann.

He translated several works, which would have been in those days, and to not a few would be today an inestimable treasure if they had ever been published. Of these unpublished translations he gave copies in his own handwriting to such persons as he had initiated into the new doctrine, or who showed a desire to study it; an immense and almost inconceivable labor, for there were seventeen octavo volumes of more than a hundred pages each, written by his own hand in the hours and minutes which the old man could steal from his large practice.

He took part also in the translation of Samuel Hahnemann’s treatise on Chronic Diseases by Guiseppe Belluomini; and to him exclusively belongs the translation of the additions by Carl Georg Christian Hartlaub and Karl Friedrich Gottfried Trinks, and the pathogenesis of Alumina from John Ernst Stapf’s Archives, by which this Italian edition is made much richer than the French.

The homeopathic periodicals, too, had in Mauro an untiring contributor; and the student often meets with his productions in the Effemeridi and in the Homeopathic Annals of Sicily, well as in the German journals.

Mauro’s translations do not always reflect the exact thought of the German author, and his diction, far from being always pure and correct, is often contaminated by words and phrases hardly tolerable in familiar conversation.

But these blemish are more than excusable in an honest and industrious veteran who, in his haste to reach the distant goal before him, does not take care to preserve that decorum and nicety which, at an earlier age and with greater leisure, he would not have neglected.

In 1829 and 1830 he was called to Rome, at Samuel Hahnemann suggestion, to prescribe for a foreign lady, (Julie Amalie Elisabeth von Voss, Countess von Ingenheim, sister in law of the King of Prussia), and by curing her and many others of all classes of society he gained for himself and Homeopathy very great repute in the Eternal City.

Some of his remarkable cures deserve especial mention, among them that of an enormous hypertrophy of the heart, with great bulling of the ribs and sternum, this cure was effected with Spigelia 30c.

At Rome he confirmed in the faith of the new doctrine Innocenzo Liuzzi, a fellow countryman resident of Rome, who had been converted in 1821 and timidly practiced Homeopathy since that year, and he left to Innocenzo Liuzzi the completion of the cure he had set in progress.

Returning to Rome early in March, 1830, he converted to Homeopathy the district physician of Velletri, who, not been able from advanced age to undertake the ardous study and laborious practice of the new doctrine, instilled its first principles into the mind of his son, Settimio Centamori, whom a shall presently meet among the most distinguished practitioner of Rome and of Italy.

Mauro subsequently returned to his native city, not, however, to enjoy there the repose to which his age and labors entitled him but to continue with rare modesty the propagation of Homeopathy, which to him was a necessity.

He took an increasing interest in the Homeopathic Annals of Sicily, edited by De Blasi, to which he contributed translations from the German useful compilations and very accurate clinical records; and in 1843, when more than eighty years old, we find him teaching in Homeopathic Dispensary of Palermo.

Years were at last more mighty than his iron will, and he retired to his adopted country, Naples, where he died, almost a hundred years old.

He was on friendly term with the most celebrated Homeopaths of his day, and enjoyed the esteem of Samuel Hahnemann, with whom he corresponded, and six of whose letters he carefully preserved. Three of these, written from Coethen; March 16th, February 7th, and September 4th, 1829 are published in the first volume of the Neapolitan journal, Hannemanno, pages 126, 158, 223. I do not know that the letters have seen the light. All are now in the possession of and too zealously guarded by Rocco Rubini.

In the letter of February 7th we find the following curt sentences: “In my opinion, I did not mention it to the Marchioness and I now say to you her disease is to be regarded rather as an engorgement of the liver than of the uterus: but this makes no difference in the treatment, since the malady results from psora. Human beings free from a psoric taint are rare”. (World’s conv., vol 2 , 1072. Pierre Augustus Rapou, vol. 1, 120, 133, etc,)

The unpublished works translated and compiled by Mauro, and of which Rocco Rubini possesses a copy, are the following. I am indebted for this notice to Thomasso Cigliano:

1. Chronic Diseases, their Nature and Homoeopathic Treatment ; by Samuel Hahnemann. Translation. 6 vols, octavo. 1829.

1. Collection of Drug provings. Published by a Society of Homoeopathic physicians, in the Archives on the Art of Healing. 1 vol., octavo, 364 pages, 1829.

1. Collection of Symptoms, printed in capitals in Samuel Hahnemann’s Materia Medica, 2nd edition, and in the Homeopathic Archives; and of symptoms, confirmed by clinical experience in Leipsic, 1 vol,, octavo, 384 pages. 1829. 4. Systematic Alphabetical Index, to facilitate the difficult practice of Homoeopathy. Compiled by Alauro. 2 vols, octavo, 300 pages each. Naples. 1829.

1. Homeopathic Pharmacology, compiled from various authors. Translation . 3 vols., octavo, 138 pages each. 1832.

6.  Clemens Maria Franz Baron von Boenninghausen: Intermittent Fevers; and Table of the Characteristics of all the Remedies, Gustav Wilhelm Gross: Essay on the Puerperal State and the treatment of the Newborn, Translation. 1 Vol,, octavo, 175 pages. Naples. 1834.

1. Homeopathic Observations by Georg von Necker, and Paul Francois Curie. Published in John Ernst Stapf’s Archives, 1 vol., octavo, 92 pages,

1. On Gottlieb Martin Wilhelm Ludwig Rau’s Method of Homeopathic Practice, Translation.

Mauro submitted cases and articles to various homeopathic publications.