i6o GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



attracted attention as being very curious, namely the fact that 

 strong contractions of the prepared frog legs took place, as 

 they lay upon the table unconnected with the electrical 

 machine and some distance away from it, when the nerves 

 were touched quite lightly with the point of the scalpel. It 

 quickly appeared that this only took place when at the same 

 time sparks were passing in the electrical machine, and 

 further, when the scalpel was held not by its insulating 

 handle, but by the conducting metal part of its blade. This 

 quite mysterious phenomenon was made by Galvani, 

 'animated by an incredible enthusiasm and desire,'^ the 

 subject of an extensive and very laborious investigation 

 lasting eleven years, and including many hundreds of experi- 

 ments on animal preparations, mainly frogs' legs; in the 

 course of this investigation he made, step by step, continually 

 new and further observations. The publication took place 

 in 1 79 1 under the title of 'Essay on the Force of Electricity in 

 the Motion of Muscles,' which is in four parts. 



The first part starts from the observation already referred 

 to, and elucidates, by all kinds of changes in the experiment, 

 the conditions under which the contraction of frogs' legs 

 without contact with the source of electricity is most success- 

 fully obtained. We can say to-day that Galvani showed the 

 greatest experimental skill in probing depths which could not 

 at that time be further illuminated, although later observers 

 might well have linked up with his work — which did not as a 

 matter of fact happen. It cannot be denied that Galvani was 

 here dealing with electric oscillations produced by the 

 sparks, with electro-magnetic induction, and even with 

 electric waves^ - all processes which were discovered in 

 another way, starting from Galvani's third part, by Volta, 

 Oersted, and Faraday, but not until a century later, and then 



^ These are his words in the publication. 



2 A very remarkable observation in this category, not upon frogs' 

 legs, is found in the fourth part of Galvani's Essay. 



