GALVANIC ELECTRICITY. 373 



that the convulsions of the frog were owing to 

 the agency of common electricity, and generated 

 by the contact of different metals, Galvani ob- 

 jected that he had succeeded in producing con- 

 vulsions by means of a single metal. And it 

 was further shown by Aldini, a nephew of Gal- 

 vani, that by bringing a portion of a warm 

 blooded animal in contact with a cold blooded 



. 



one, as the nerve and muscles of a frog with the 

 bloody flesh of a newly decapitated ox, ener- 

 getic contractions were produced. When he 

 held a prepared frog in his hand, moistened with 

 a solution of salt, and applied the crural nerves 

 of the animal to the tip of his tongue, convul- 

 sions were also excited* from which he in- 

 ferred, with Galvani, that there is a peculiar 

 electricity in animal bodies which does not 

 require the contact of metals for its develope- 

 ment. It is somewhat surprising that he was 

 never led to suspect, from these curious experi- 

 ments, the identity of animal heat with the 

 cause of muscular contraction and still more 

 remarkable, that neither Galvani nor Yolta ever 

 suspected the connexion of the phenomena with 

 chemical action. 



The agency of caloric in exciting convulsions 



* The experiments were successfully repeated before a Com- 

 mittee of the National Institute of France, and afterwards at the 

 Anatomical Theatre in London, Great Windmill Street. 



