Manchester Meinoiis, Vol. Ivii. (191 3), No. ID. 25 



electricity in the muscles, and in the document reproduced, 

 PL V.A,yo\x see some lines written in Galvani's hand- 

 writing in which he says that the nerve-power is smaller 

 in old animals than in young animals. 



It was reserved for the great Alessandro Volta to find 

 the right theory of electricity. 



The discover}' of galvanic electricity was made accord- 

 ing to tradition as follows : Galvani's wife, an invalid, 

 was advised to eat frogs' legs. These legs her husband 

 prepared. He left the room after having skinned some. 

 The legs on the table were touched by somebody with a 

 knife at the same time as by chance Galvani's assistant 

 turned the handle of an electrical machine. Thus a shock 

 was communicated to the legs, the twitching of which was 

 noted by Galvani's wife, who informed her husband. The 

 scene of discovery is represented in an old engraving 

 reproduced,/^/. V.B. 



On Plate [Y. there is a page from Volta's note- 

 book, in which various bodies are arranged as to their 

 electric qualities. This is one of the early drafts belonging 

 to Volta's inquiries into the electric nature of various 

 bodies which Avere crowned by the invention of the 

 famous pile. 



But how little Volta was recognised, at least in his 

 own Fatherland, becomes evident in the following letter. 

 This letter alters all the dates in biographies of Volta, 

 which say that he retired in 1804, whereas this letter, 

 wherein he clearly states that he had already retired, was 

 written in 1803. He was, as a matter of fact, again given 

 a professorship in Padua, in 1815, by the Emperor 

 Franciscus of Austria. But how could a man be sufficiently 

 honoured who could rightly say about himself ' Galvanism, 

 the new branch of science, which I have almost created.' 



