Vital and Physical Motion. 1 2 5 



ficing hecatombs of frogs, and never wavering in his 

 belief in the existence of animal electricity, or in the 

 conclusion he had come to respecting the action of this 

 electricity in vital motion : but during his lifetime he 

 was destined to be foiled in his hopes to bring others to 

 the same mind with himself, and that ;too by a weapon 

 which lay hid in one of his own experiments. The 

 experiment in question was one in which a galvanoscopic 

 frog* was thrown into a state of momentary contraction 

 by placing a conducting arc, of which one-half was 

 silver and the other half copper, between the lumbar 

 nerves and the crural muscles. Galvani, as was his 

 wont, explained these contractions by supposing that 

 the conducting arc had served to discharge animal 

 electricity, and that the contractions were the result 

 of the discharge. Volta, on the other hand, was of 

 opinion that the electricity producing these contractions 

 originated in certain reactions between the silver and 

 copper portions of the conducting arc ; and he was not 

 shaken in this view by what he did afterwards, for, wish- 

 ing to confirm it, he began a series of investigations 

 which ended in the discovery of the voltaic pile and 

 battery a discovery which filled all minds with wonder, 

 and for a long time afterwards diverted attention 

 altogether from the consideration of the claims of 

 animal electricity. In the meantime, however, while 

 Volta was demonstrating the existence of that electricity 

 which originates in the reaction of heterogeneous bodies, 

 and which is now known as voltaic electricity, Galvani 

 continued his search after animal electricity, and made 

 many important discoveries as he went along. He dis- 



* The galvanoscopic frog was prepared from the hinder half of the 

 animal, by stripping off the skin, and dissecting away all the parts between 

 the thighs and the fragment of the spine except the principal nerves. 



