Paolo Mantegazza

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“Il Senatore erotico” - Paolo Mantegazza, the “pioneer of the pioneers” of sexology.

Paolo Mantegazza (born October 31, 1831 in Monza , † August 28, 1910 in San Terenzo ) was an Italian neurologist , physiologist and anthropologist, as well as an important doctor and consciousness researcher . Mantegazza published several papers on the effects of psychotropic plants on human consciousness, numerous other scientific writings and several novels that were bestsellers in his day, but have since been almost forgotten.

Life

Paolo Mantegazza was born in Monza near Milan in Lombardy , the first-born son of wealthy parents from the upper class . His father was Giovan Battista Mantegazza, his mother, Laura Solera Mantegazza , was one of the first social reformers in Italy, a friend of Garibaldi and patriot of the " Risorgimento ". Around 1850 she founded the first “day care center” for toddlers from poor people and in 1870 the first “vocational school” for women in Italy. Paolo Mantegazza wrote her first biography "La mia mama" in 1876.

Philanthropist Laura Mantegazza circa 1865

Mantegazza first studied medicine in Pisa and Milan and completed his studies in Pavia in 1854 . He then traveled to India and South America , where he practiced as a doctor in Argentina and Paraguay . In 1858 he returned to Italy and worked as a surgeon in Milan. In 1860 he was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Pavia, where he founded the first institute for general pathology in Europe. The physician and physiologist and later Nobel Prize winner Camillo Golgi received his doctorate in 1865 at this institute. The medical faculty of the University of Pavia has been one of the leading research institutions in Italy since the 17th century and was considered one of the most progressive in Italy in the mid-19th century. In 1870 Mantegazza became professor of anthropology at the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence . Here he founded the Museo Antropologico-Etnografico di Firenze (anthropological and ethnographic museum) and in 1871 with Felice Finzi the specialist journal Archivio per l'Antropologia e l'Etnologia, which is still published today . At that time, culture and science in Italy were much more influenced by the Catholic Church than they are today . Mantegazza was repeatedly attacked by church circles, especially because he was an advocate of Darwinism and an atheist . From 1868 to 1875 he had a lively correspondence with Charles Darwin .

From 1865 to 1876 Mantegazza was Deputy of Monza in the Italian Chamber of Deputies and from 1876 Senator in the Kingdom of Italy .

Mantegazza died in his summer residence in San Terenzo in 1910 .

Drug research pioneer

During his many years as a doctor in South America, Mantegazza observed the habit of local coca farmers to chew the leaves of the coca bushes. In the "service of science" he began to imitate them with three daily doses of three grams of coca leaves each. In 1859 he published the text Sulle virtù igieniche e medicinali della coca e sugli alimenti nervosi in generale (On the hygienic and medical benefits of coca and nerve nutrition in general) , for which he received an award and which both in Italy and abroad for caused a stir. Due to the fact that Mantegazza differentiates between coca and cocaina in his writings , it is assumed that he had already extracted the alkaloid cocaine from coca leaves and ingested it himself in 1859 . Mantegazza is therefore often associated with cocaine in the literature, but his interest in the effects of psychotropic substances went much further, and he published numerous papers with treatises on the intoxicating effects of various intoxicants such as alcohol , mate , guarana , opium , hashish , Kava or Ayahuasca ( agahuasca ) and classified them according to their effects in 1859, more than sixty years before Louis Lewin carried out his classification in his 1924 work Phantastica .

Sexology

Almost forgotten, outstanding in his time were his numerous publications in the field of sexology, which was not established until later : Fisiologia del piacere (1854); Fisiologia dell'amore (1873); Igiene dell'amore (1886); Gli amori degli uomini - Saggio di una etnologia dell'amore (1886) and Fisiologia della donna (1893) - in which he summarizes observations, his own experiments and anthropological-ethnological results of extensive collections, research and trips in the sense of a “phenomenology of heterosexual love ... which is unparalleled in the history of sexology. ”- Already at the age of 22 he wrote“ Fundamentals of Edonology or the Science of Enjoyment ”( to be understood today as hedonism ) and opposes“ false puritans ”or“ gloomy ones , stinking fog of hypocrisy “( Volkmar Sigusch in: Deutsches Ärzteblatt 7/2007 - see web link).

Fonts (selection)

Essays

  • Sulle origine igieniche e medicinali della coca e sugli alimenti nervosi in generale . In: Annali Universali di Medicina , Vol. 167 (1859), pp. 449-519.
  • Sull'introduzione in Europe della coca, nuovo alimento nervoso . In: Annali di Chimica applicati alla Medicina , Vol. 29 (1859), pp. 18-21.
  • Lettere mediche. Lettera VIII, sul mate . In: Gazzetta medica Italiana-Lombarda , Vol. 4 (1859), pp. 85-92.
  • Del guaranà, nuovo alimento nervoso. Ricerche sperimentali . In: Annali di Chimica applicati alla Medicina , Vol. 192 (1865), April, pp. 8-13.

Monographs

  • Fisiologia del piacere . G. Bernardoni, Milan 1854.
    • Physiology of pleasure . Zenith-Verlag, Leipzig 1928 (translated by H. Passarge).
  • Quadri della natura umana. Fixed ed ebbrezze . Brigola, Milan 1871 (2 vol.).
  • Fisiologia dell'amore . G. Bernardoni, Milan 1873.
    • The Physiology of Love (The Most Popular Novels in World Literature; Vol. 11). Verlag der Schillerbuchhandlung, Berlin 1924.
  • Igiene dell'amore . G. Bernardoni, Milan 1877.
    • The hygiene of love . Zenith-Verlag, Leipzig 1927.
  • Fisiologia del dolore . Marzocco, Florence 1948 (reprint of the Florence edition 1880).
  • Gli amori degli uomini. Saggio di una etnologia dell'amore . G. Bernardoni, Milan 1886.
    • The gender relations of humans (The colorful novels of world literature; Vol. 12). Verlag der Schillerbuchhandlung, Berlin 1925.
  • La mia mamma (Piccola biblioteca del popolo italiano; Vol. 11). G. Barbèra, Florence 1886.
  • Le estasi umane . Mantegazza Edizione, Milan 1887 (2 vol.).
    • The ecstasy of man . Costenoble, Jena 1888 (2 vol.).
  • Fisiologia della donna . Treves, Milan 1893.
    • The physiology of women . 8th edition. Verlag Neufeld & Henius, Berlin 1911.
  • L'Anno 3000. Viaggio verso Andropoli . Tipheret, Rome 2010, ISBN 978-88-649-6028-9 (EA Milan 1887)

literature

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paolo Colussi: Una tranquilla famiglia borghese
  2. ↑ Paolo Mantegazza: Ricordi politici di un fantaccino del Parlamento . Florence: Bemporad, 1896, p. 72.
  3. ↑ Former title: Anthropological-cultural-historical studies on human gender relations . Costenoble, Jena 1886.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mantegazza, Paolo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian neurologist, physiologist and anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Monza
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1910
Place of death San Terenzo