LUIGI GALVANI AND ALLESSANDRO VOLTA 159 



electricity, since the means were given of producing a contin- 

 uous flow of large quantities of electricity, whereas hitherto 

 only minute amounts, or somewhat larger amounts stored 

 in Leyden jars, had been momentarily set in motion, so that 

 the processes connected therewith had for the most part 

 remained hidden. In the discovery and utilisation of these 

 processes consists practically everything which makes the 

 'age of electricity.' All this only became possible through 

 the work of Galvani and Volta. 



The beginnings, as is always the case with great advances 

 into the completely unknown, lay in a modest and devoted 

 eff^ort to understand processes of nature which had hitherto 

 been little or only superficially noticed, which certainly 

 seemed mysterious, but could not be successfully elucidated 

 by already known methods. Only the rare spirit of born 

 investigators of nature could feel drawn to such activity. It 

 did not promise external success, not even in the academic 

 world; for the object of the investigation was not even 

 regarded as of any importance. 



Galvani was born at Bologna, and began by studying 

 theology, but soon decided upon medicine. He married 

 early the daughter of his guardian and teacher, worked on 

 the kidneys and ears of fowls, and then lectured from 1762 

 onwards on medicine at the University of Bologna, where he 

 became professor of anatomy in 1775, and later also professor 

 of obstetrics. 



He had quite early made experiments on the excitation of 

 the motor nerves of frog preparations, as we see from a 

 lecture given by him in 1773; but this had to do with 

 mechanical stimulation only. It was an obvious step to study 

 the electrical stimulation of the frogs; the contraction of living 

 muscle produced by electric shocks was known since the 

 time of Guericke and Leibniz. During work with the elec- 

 trical machine in the presence of several persons, it happened 

 in the year 1780 that an observation was made which at once 



