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OALDPPI, BALDASSARK. 



OAMA, VASCO DK. 



OALUPPI, BALDASSARE, born 170S. Mod 1805. composer of 

 (treat reputation in hU day. very commonly known by tba name of 

 Buran.Ho, from hi* birth-plae*, Bunuio, new Venice. He was a 

 disciple of Lotti, and bU flrat opera wa. produced at Venice in 1722. 

 la the middU of to. la* century Galnppi work, were highly esteemed, 

 and eome of hi* compositions would now, if properly arranged, find 

 admirers among the lover* of good dramatic music. 



OALVA'Nl, ALOYSIUS (Lewis), wa. descended from a respectable 

 family of Bologna, which had produced everal distinguished man of 

 IsiUra. lie wai bora in that town in 1737. ami in oonaeqneoco of a 

 raUfiou* turn of mind which he strongly displayed during his child- 

 hood, wa* at first designed for holy order* and to take the monastic 

 TOW*. He afterwards changed his intention* while studying at the 

 university of Bologna, and married the daughter of his tutor Galeaiii, 

 who was a professor at that university, and with whom he had for 

 one time lived on term* of close intimacy. His degree of M.I), was 

 conferred in 1762, and his fame had so far increased that he received 

 the appointment of Lecturer on Medicine at the Institute of his 

 native town. In the ' Memoir*' of this body we find contributions on 

 various medical subject* by Galvani. He also published separately 

 ' Observations on the Urinary Organs,' and ' On the Organs of Hearing 

 in Bird*; ' but an accidental circumstance, of which he availed himself 

 with aculeness and much judgment, introduced him to a novel subject, 

 the announcement of which at that time excited deep attention 

 throughout Europe, and gave birth to a new and fruitful branch of 

 physics, which yet retains in all countries the name of its first 



During his temporary absence from his house, his wife, who was 

 bout to prepare tome soup from frogs, having Uken off their skins, 

 laid them on a table in the studio near the conductor of an electrical 

 machine which had been recently charged. She waa much surprised, 

 upon touching them with the scalpel (which must have received a 

 park from the machine), to observe the muscles of the frogs atrougly 

 convulsed. She acquainted him with the facts upon his return. 

 Oalvani repeated the experiment, and found that it was necessary to 

 pus a spark or communicate electricity through the metallic substance 

 with which the frogs were touched. After having varied the expe- 

 riment in several ways, he was led to conclude that there existed an 

 animal electricity both in nerves and muscles, and some future expe- 

 riments appearing favourable to that erroneous inference, he eeems to 

 have clung to that opinion during the remainder of his life, notwith- 

 standing the experiments of Yalta and others, which showed at least 

 that the moisture on the surface of the frog acted as n conductor. 



The following circumstance was that on which Oalvani most relied 

 for the accuracy of his opinion : Having seen the effects of the direct 

 electricity of the machine on the muscles of frogs, and that by 

 exposing only the spine, legs, and connecting nerves to the electrical 

 action a very small charge was sufficient to produce the convulsive 

 motions ; be imagined that the atmospheric electricity, though of feeble 

 tension, might be sufficient to produce like results. He therefore 

 suspended some frogs thus prepared by metallic hooks to iron railings, 

 when he observed that the convulsed motions depended on the 

 position of the frog relative to the metals. The same phenomenon 

 led Volts to an opposite conclusion, and a war of opinion for some 

 time divided philosopher*. Into this dispute it will not be necessary 

 now to enter; ultimately Volta triumphed over Oalvani, but failed to 

 convince him. 



The work in which Oalvani developed bii views relative to this new 

 class of phenomena was published in 1791, under the title ' Aloysii 

 Oalvani de viribus Klectriciut is in Motu Musculari Commentarius,' in 

 which he infers that the bodies of animals possess a peculiar kind of 

 electricity, by which motion is communicated by nerve to muscle, 

 and in these experiments he regarded the metals acting only as con- 

 ductors between these substances, which ho thought accounted for the 

 observed contraction* of the muscle, in the same manner that the 

 dissimilar electricities on the interior and exterior surfaces of a 

 Lvyden jar reunite with explosion through a metallic conductor. If 

 the reader is desirous to make an experiment of this kind, let him 

 separate the head and upper parts of the body of a frog, remove the 

 akin from the legs, clear out the abdomen, separate the spine below 

 the origin of the sciatic nerves, that they alone may form the con- 

 nection with the legs ; then envelop the spine and nerves with tinfoil, 

 and, placing the legs on silver, complete the circuit by making the two 

 ms4sli touch : the convulsive motions will be instantly produced. 



Philosophers in other countries hastened to repeat and vary these 

 experiment*. Fowler found that when the circuit was completed by 

 the eye, the contact of ths metals produced the sensation of a flash of 

 light ; and Robinson remarked the acid taste when the tongue was 

 used between the metals, to which he also attributed the peculiar 

 taste of porter when drank from pewter vessel. It may be added 

 that Sulzer, as early as 1767, described the influence upon taste caused 

 by the contact of different metals with each other and with the tongue ; 

 result* of this kind were pursued with more eagerness than nature 

 eemcd willing to gratify, and the influence of Galvanism on the 

 owe* of smelling and hearing, which Carallo thought he had observed, 

 have not been verified, or rather hare been disproved. 



The interesting researches of Oalvani having acquired such extensive 

 notoriety (See 'Phil Trans.,' 1793), introduced him to the pleasures 



and the troubles of an extensive correspondence. In 1797 Oalvani 

 made voyage along the shore* of the Adriatic for the purpose of 

 confirming his notions on animal electricity by experiments on the 

 Gy mnotus, from n hich he concluded that the brain contributed to 

 produce the obs-rvrd effects. His wife, who had proved hera-lf a 

 sensible and an affectionate woman, died soon after his return, a Ion 

 which he Mem* to have felt very severely. HU afflictions were 

 increased during the French occupation of Italy; he was expelled 

 from the office* which he held, because he refused the prescribed 

 oaths when Bologna formed a part of the Cisalpine republic. His 

 pecuniary circumstance* at this time, as well as his health, were in a 

 very low state, and shortly after hi* restoration to his former office* 

 he died, in 1798. Qalvani gave his name to the department of elec- 

 tricity which originated from these experiments, though its early 

 progress was due in a much greater degree to his contemporary, Volta, 

 by whom piles were first constructed for increasing the intensity of the 

 electricity produced by a single pair of plate*. 



OAMA, VASCO DK, the first European navigator who found hi* 

 way to India by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, was born at the 

 small sea-port town of Sines in Portugal. The date of his birth, and 

 the circumstance* of his early life, are not mentioned. It appears that 

 he was in the household of Emanuel king of Portugal, and having 

 devoted himself to navigation and discovery, was appointed to the 

 command of an expedition which was to seek its way to tho Indian 

 Ocean by sailing round the southern extremity of Africa, The notion 

 of this passage was by no means a new one, and when it was taken 

 up by the Portuguese sovereign iU practicability had been pretty well 

 established. In 1487 Pedro de Covilham set out for India by way of 

 the Mediterranean, the Isthmus of Suez, and the Red Sea, and he was 

 accompanied as far as Egypt by Alfonso de Payva, who then left him 

 to go in search of ' Prester John,' a great Christian king, who, after 

 being sought for in various countries, was now reported to be living 

 in a high state of civilisation in the eastern parts of Africa. Before 

 their departure from Portugal, Calsadilla, bishop of Viseu, gave these 

 travellers a map of Africa, in which that continent was correctly des- 

 cribed as being bounded on the south by a navigable sea. This map, 

 or the materials for it, had probably been procured from the trading 

 Moors of North Africa, to whom the Portuguese had long before been 

 indebted for much information concerning that continent 



Payva added little to geographical knowledge ; but Covilham crossed 

 the Indian Ocean, visited Goa, Calicut, and other places on the coast 

 of Hindustan, acquired an exalted notion of the trade and wealth of 

 those parts, and on his return towards the Hed Sea he obtained from 

 Arabian mariners some information concerning the eastern coast of 

 Africa as far as Sofala on the Mozambique Channel. Soon after his 

 return he visited Abyssinia, where he was detained by the govern- 

 ment for some thirty years. Shortly afi-r arriving in that country 

 he found means of forwarding letters to the king of Portugal, in which 

 ho stated that no doubt existed as to the possibility of sailing from 

 Europe to India by doubling the southern point of Africa, and he 

 added that that southern cape was well known to Arabian and Indian 

 navigators. The reports of Covilham, and the well-known importance 

 of the trade with India, greatly excited the Portuguese, who moreover 

 had long been pursuing discovery on tho western coast of Africa, At 

 the end of December 1487, Bartholomew Diaz hod returned to Lisbon 

 after discovering 300 leagues of coast, and correctly laying down the 

 Oreat Cape, which he doubled in a storm without knowing it, but which 

 he had properly recognised on his return. 



Vasco de Oama sailed from Lisbon on the 8th of July 1197, five years 

 after the discovery of tho New World by Columbus. Tho royal 

 squadron which he commanded consisted only of three Email vessels, 

 with sixty men in all The Cape of Good Hope seemed to merit the 

 name which had been given to it by Diaz Cabo Tormento*). Dread- 

 ful tempests were encountered before reaching it, the winds were con- 

 trary, and their fears and their sufferings caused a mutiny among the 

 sailors, who tried to induce Gama to put back. But the firmness of 

 the commander quieted the apprehensions of his men, and on tho 19th 

 of November, with a stormy sea, he doubled tho Cape and turned 

 along the eastern shore. On reaching the African town of Meliudo, 

 which belonged to a commercial and civilised people, a branch of the 

 great race of Moors, or Arabian Mohammedans, he found several 

 Christian merchants from India, and he also procured the valuable 

 services of Malemo Caua, a pilot from Guzerat. This man waa a skil- 

 ful navigator : he was not surprised at the sight of the astrolabe, or 

 at their method of taking the meridian altitude of the sun. He told 

 them that both the instrument and its uses were familiar to the 

 mariners of the Eastern seas. Under the guidance of this pilot Oama 

 made the coast of Malabar in twenty-three days, and anchored before 

 Calicut on the 20th of May 1498, then a place of considerable manu- 

 factures and foreign trade, which was chiefly in the hands of Moors or 

 Arabs. Oama opened communications with the zamnrin or sovereign 

 prince of Calicut, who, after some negociatiou, agreed to receive him 

 with the honours usually paid to an ambassador. 



The sailors, who were well acquainted with the cliaractar of the 

 Moors, feared that if their commander put himself in their power ho 

 would fall a victim to their treachery and jealousy. The officers also 

 and his brother Paul strongly dissuaded him from landing. But Oama 

 was resolved. Arming twelve of his bravest meu, ho weut into his 



