85 



CHAPTER II. 



RECEPTION AND CONFIRMATION OF THE DISCOVERY 

 OF VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY. 



ALVANI'S experiments excited a great interest 

 VJT all over Europe, in consequence partly of a 

 circumstance which, as we have seen, was unes- 

 sential, the muscular contractions and various sen- 

 sations which they occasioned. Galvani himself 

 had not only considered the animal element of the 

 circuit as the origin of the electricity, but had 

 framed a theory 1 , in which he compared the muscles 

 to charged jars, and the nerves to the discharging 

 wires; and a controversy was, for some time, car- 

 ried on, in Italy, between the adherents of Galvani 

 and those of Volta 2 . 



The galvanic experiments, and especially those 

 which appeared to have a physiological bearing, 

 were verified and extended by a number of the 

 most active philosophers of Europe, and especially 

 William von Humboldt. A commission of the In- 

 stitute of France, appointed in 1797, repeated many 

 of the known experiments, but does not seem to 

 have decided any disputed points. The researches 

 of this commission referred rather to the discoveries 

 of Galvani than to those of Volta : the latter were, 

 indeed, hardly known in France till the conquest 



1 Fischer, viii. 613. 2 Ib. viii. 619. 



