1 2 2 Traces of Unity in. 



fruit, and are chiefly of interest as being the first step in 

 an inquiry which did not really begin until two hundred 

 years later, when an event occurred in a house in Bologna 

 which marks the birth of a new epoch in the philosophy 

 of vital motion, and on which it may be well to dwell 

 for a moment or two. The house is in the Via Ugo 

 Bassi, gia Strada Felice. The event is commemorated 

 on a marble slab over the doorway in these words : 



LUIGI GALVANI 



in questa casa 



di sua temporaria dimora 



al primi di settembre 



dell' anno MDCCLXXXVI 



scoperse dalle morte rane 



LA ELETTRICITA ANIMALE 



Fonte di maraviglie 



a ttitti secoli. 



The actual event was this. Experimenting with an 

 ordinary electrical machine at no great distance from a 

 plate on which lay a number of frogs' legs prepared for 

 cooking, and noticing that these legs jumped whenever 

 he drew a spark from the prime conductor, it occurred to 

 Galvani that the parts which had been intended simply 

 as a dish for dinner might be made to do good service 

 as electroscopes in some experiments on atmospheric 

 electricity in which he was then engaged. Thereupon, 

 he and his nephew Camillo Galvani, who happened to 

 be his companion at the time, ascended to a belvedere 

 which served the purpose of an electrical observatory, 

 and at once proceeded to put the idea in practice. It 

 was expected that the limbs which had jumped in obedi- 

 ence to discharges of franklinic electricity might also 

 jump in obedience to discharges of atmospheric elec- 



