Bestsellers of the past: Paolo Mantegazza, the virtue of being healthy and beautiful

The birth of an audience for science in united Italy

In fact, today that of health and well-being is certainly one of the sectors most beaten by publishing. If we then combine that of food and gastronomy, it becomes all too present, sometimes nagging, in some cases pervasive: if not the first, we are close. And just go into any bookshop to see how much space books on nutrition, food, health, well-being and so on take up on the counters and between the shelves.

It wasn't like that once. For food, we had to wait for the famous Artusi manual, released at the end of the XNUMXth century, to start a sector that was not very thriving in publishing until about twenty years ago. Yes, it had its own space, but all in all quite limited. There were other sectors that were the driving force, and which obviously reflected the trends, fashions, tastes and lifestyles of society.

But for some decades the presence of food has become really excessive, with all the broadcasts, features and spaces it occupies in the world of communication, the media, television and the press. And in our own lives.

The health sector is less invasive, even if it is growing considerably. And there would be nothing wrong with that. Indeed, only to rejoice! Medical information is certainly positive, as is the fact that readers pay due attention to their health, medical care, hygiene, health practices and so on.

The birth of a new readership

Until the mid-nineteenth century books and texts on the subject were very rare, aimed almost exclusively at specialists and health professionals.

For health, an important turning point came when Paolo Mantegazza appeared on the publishing scene, author of a series of works that would change the face of that sector and give proof of excellent medical-scientific dissemination.

With him also the popular classes (or at least those who had access to reading, which were not many, given that in the 20s, when he began to operate, only 30-XNUMX% of the population was able to reading and writing) were finally able to be informed on health and medicine issues. And among them Mantegazza became a widely followed author and of extraordinary usefulness, in a period in which little was known about health, diseases, prophylaxis, hygienic habits.

Thanks to him the world of medicine was able to enter the common culture, make itself known, allow for greater hygiene, contribute to the care of the body as never before. His works passed through the hands of tens and tens of thousands of people, playing an extremely positive role.

Not only that, but Paolo Mantegazza was also an all-round writer, and we also owe him books on fiction, politics, journalism, which like those more properly on health, have contributed to raising the cultural level of readers. And there have also been forays into other sectors, such as anthropology, economics, tourism, where he has left traces that are not ephemeral: in short, an extremely fruitful author.

The life

Paolo Mantegazza was born in Monza in 1831 into a well-to-do and famous family. He receives a liberal and patriotic education, based on social and civil values, and also on the sense of self-denial and service to others, which he has the opportunity to verify firsthand during the revolt of the five days in Milan, when he sees his mother at the age of seventeen to do their utmost to care for and assist the population injured in the clashes.

He completed his studies in medicine, immediately showing great passion for the subject, so much so that as a student he received some professional assignments, which he carried out with passion and competence. He graduated in 1854, and immediately afterwards left on a trip to Europe and then to South America, where he dedicated himself to caring for the sick and studying some pathologies that were widespread there. It is in this habitat that he has the opportunity to verify, among other things, the therapeutic function of cocaine and other "substances", so much so that he will write reports on the subject, becoming an international expert on them.

Returning from Argentina, where in the meantime he married a local noblewoman with whom he will have 4 children, he obtained the university chair in general pathology in Pavia at the age of just 29. And in this context he founded the first laboratory of experimental pathology in Europe.

These were years of study and intense professional activity, both in the field of medical teaching and research, and in that of scientific dissemination. He composes texts of great commitment at an extremely fast pace, similar to that of the various serial narrators, such as Salgari and Invernizio, who, however, only dedicated themselves to that. For him there is also the medical profession to carry out. He manages to manage everything with ways and times that are incredible. In Paris, for example, at the age of 23, he had managed to compose in just 48 days The physiology of pleasure, a book that will prove to be one of his best sellers ever.

Engagement in politics

At the age of 34, in 1865, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Politics is not an entirely new activity for him, as he had already held the position of city councilor in Milan, but the commitment to the national parliament is certainly more onerous and Mantegazza must move the center of gravity of his many activities to the capital Tuscan, which from 1865 to 1870 was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.

And in Florence, in addition to politics, he embarked on further arduous undertakings: he obtained the chair of anthropology and ethnology at the local university and managed to build a very important museum, the first in Italy dedicated to those disciplines.

In the meantime he tirelessly continues his activity as a writer, which is rewarding him beyond measure with books that have truly made history and contributed not a little to knowledge and sensitivity on health issues.

He was re-elected in the following elections to the position of deputy and in 1876 he obtained the appointment as senator of the Kingdom. At the same time, like the great scientist he is, he continues his medical research work and also deals with absolutely unexplored aspects at the time, putting forward hypotheses that were almost science fiction for the times, but which will later have important applications, such as artificial insemination or conservation of organic substances, through freezing with ice.

A theorist and apostle of Darwinism

Mantegazza becomes one of the greatest exponents of Darwinism, as well as its greatest popularizer in Italy. Faithful to the beliefs of positivism, he also tries to explain the phenomena of psychic life, investigating the most remote recesses of the human mind. And this in the belief, perhaps too optimistic at the time, but typically positivist, that everything can be brought to light, analysed, investigated and adequately looked after in perspective.

He also dedicates a volume to the subject which by its nature is the least rational of all, love, Physiology of love, which enjoys enormous public success, made up of many editions and reprints throughout the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century.

A great communicator…

Other essays on the most characteristic themes of human life meet with equal success with readers, confirming the fact that good disclosure, and that of Mantegazza certainly is, always rewards. Let's just remember, of the over forty texts that he prints, Physiology of pleasure, Pain physiology, Physiology of hate, Physiology of the woman, and many more, from Elements of hygiene, Human ecstasies, from The art of getting married to the consideration The art of getting married, Up to The human characters.

He also writes a book in open controversy with Heart of De Amicis, who in those years was raging like no other, and entitled it Head, to reiterate the importance of the rational component in the individual, and the need for adequate attention to be paid to it. And he publishes it with the same publisher as Heart, the Treves of Milan. The box office will continue to reward beyond measure Heart, but the shrewd editor, faced with the controversies that the two texts arouse, will be able to place himself above the diatribe.

… and even a novelist

He is also a novelist, although this activity, among the many he carries out, is completely marginal. He composes only very few novels, but one in particular, One day in Madeira, gets a good success, for a total of several tens of thousands of copies, perhaps over one hundred thousand. In this book he uses the narrative to fight another battle in the name of health, in particular the unfortunately widespread use of marrying between blood relatives and also between tuberculosis. One day in Madeira in fact, in the form of the epistolary novel, i.e. the exchange of letters between the two protagonists, it tells the story of an unhappy love affair between two consumptives, destined to end in a funereal way for both.

Mantegazza died in 1910 in Lerici, at the age of 79, after an industrious life like few others, lived in the name of scientific research and medical dissemination, of which he was the greatest interpreter in that period, and without disdaining forays into other sectors, such as those of politics and fiction.