Cnar. VIL, § 1.] 
racter and circumstances were sufficiently marked. 
Galvani was a professional anatomist and physiolo- 
gist; Volta a physicist. Galvani was little known, 
and had probably travelled little beyond the province 
in which he resided; Volta was personally and ad- 
vantageously known in Paris and London. Galvani, 
ELECTRICITY.—GALVANI. 
959 
“ On the Nervous Force and its relation to Electri- 
city.”® In 1786 he pursued the enquiry, with the 
aid of his nephew Camillo Galvani; and the effect 
of thunder-storms in occasioning muscular contrac- 
tions in the frog (which he had previously noticed), 
was farther studied. He then designated the pre- 
soon after his discovery, fell into undeserved political 
disgrace, which undermined his health; Volta lived 
to an advanced age, his experiments and discoveries 
rewarded by every honour which not only academic 
pared frog as “ the most delicate electrometer yet and on 
discovered.”’* But this year was also the one of saptaeted 
his real discovery, namely, that muscular contrac- tion with 
tions are sometimes occasioned by causes remote it. 
—S 
ale.) 
authority could bestow, but which the almost uni- 
versal sway of Napoleon could render to his genius. 
Galvani died prematurely, and whilst his best obser- 
vations were contested; Volia survived to nearly 
the latest term of human life, having witnessed the 
fruits of his great invention in the splendid disco- 
veries of Davy and Oersted. 
The biographical particulars of Galvani’s life may 
be passed over in a few words. The history of his 
discoveries has been recently materially enlarged and 
corrected, by the researches of the Academy of Bo- 
logna to which he belonged, and especially by those 
of Professor Gherardi; it forms, together with his 
collected writings, a ponderous quarto volume.t The 
diffuseness of the commentary, and that of Galvani’s 
writings also, is a defect in this compilation, which 
tends to weaken the unquestionable force of the evi- 
dence in his favour. 
Lurer Gatvant was born in 1737, and was 
promoted in 1762 to the chair of anatomy at Bo- 
(731.) 
(732.) 
Galvani’s 
oa ogna, his native place, the seat of a most cele- 
the Ner- brated university. He studied and taught his science 
vous Sys- with great success, and published several memoirs. 
ae Probably he would have become still more widely 
known, but that he was anticipated in some of his 
observations (particularly on the organ of hearing) 
by the celebrated Scarpa; in consequence of which, 
Galvani, with his customary modesty, suppressed 
what had already become known through that able 
anatomist. As early at least as 1780 (as we learn 
from the researches of Gherardi, and the MSS. of 
Galvani himself), he made experiments on muscu- 
lar contractions taking place by electric influence 
from the electrical machine, the electrophorus, and 
the Leyden phial.? The experiments were made 
on frogs in particular, This was ten years antece- 
dent to the commonly alleged casual discovery of 
galvanism. The experiments were continued in 1781 
and 1782, when he drew up a paper (not published) 
from any then known to be connected with electricity. 
Camillo Galvani, pursuing his uncle’s experiments 
on Atmospheric Electricity, had prepared some frogs, 
by dividing them about the middle, and detaching a 
portion of the lumbar nerves from the integuments, 
leaving them in contact with a portion of the verte- 
bral column which was then suspended by an iron 
hook, These prepared frogs were lying horizontally 
on the top of an iron rail of a balcony on the third 
floor of Galvani’s house, where he was in the habit of 
observing the effects of atmospheric electricity. The 
nephew noticed that when the hook or the vertebra 
were pressed on the rail by the finger or otherwise, 
muscular contractions ensued, which he pointed out to 
his uncle, who lost no time in repeating the observa- 
tion, which seems to have been made early in Sep- 
tember 1786.5 His experiments in this and the fol- 
lowing month are detailed, with the exact dates still 
preserved, with this remarkable title in Galvani’s 
hand-writing, — Esperimenti circa V’Eletricita dei 
Metalli; and the results are formally drawn up 
in a Latin Dissertation of 62 pages, bearing date 
30th October 1786, forming the substance of the 
most important section of his Commentary on the 
Electric Forces, &¢., published five years later, but 
differing from it in some important particulars.® 
Thus it appears distinctly, that one metal alone 
—iron—was used in producing the convulsion;? 
whilst in the printed Commentary, the hooks are 
said to be of brass or of copper. The explanation is, 
that Galvani having become aware of the superior 
efficacy of unlike metals in contact, described the ex- 
periment, not as it was first made, but as it might be 
made with greater certainty. Yet, singularly enough, 
this Dissertation is entitled,—De animali Electrici- 
tate; showing, that in the short space of a few weeks, 
he had abandoned his earlier notion of the metals being 
the source of the electricity, and ascribed the effects 
to the proper electricity of the nerves and muscles. 
1 Opere edite ed inedite del professore Luigi Gal 
bhiseat, 
per cura dell’ Accademia delle Scienze dell’ Instituto di 
2 
Bologna. Bologna, 1841. 
2 Rapporto, &c., p. 11 (in the work above cited). 
t lte e p 
The copy which I use belongs to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
3 Ib. p. 18. 
_* Ib. p. 30. The expression is remarkable, because Volta is often regarded as the first who considered the frog in the aspect 
of a mere electroscope. 
5 Rapporto, pp. 33, 36. 
§ Tb. p. 35, 36. It were to be desired that this MS. were published in full. 
7 The passage from the MS, is conclusive,— Ranas itaque consueto more paratas uncino ferreo earum spinali medulla perfo- 
rata atque appensa, Septembris initio [1786] die vesperascente supra parapetto horizontaliter collocavimus. 
laminam (namely, the top of the iron parapet or rail) tangebat ; 
Uncinus ferream 
en motus in rana spontanei, varii, haud infrequentes! Si digito 
uncinulum adversus ferream superficiem premeretur, quiescentes excitabantur et toties ferme quoties hujusmodi pressio adhi- 
beretur.”—Rapporto, p. 36. 
