A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



The story is told that Galvani was led to his discov- 

 ery while preparing frogs' legs to make a broth for his 

 invalid wife. As the story runs, he had removed the 

 skins from several frogs' legs, when, happening to touch 

 the exposed muscles with a scalpel which had lain in 

 close proximity to an electrical machine, violent mus- 

 cular action was produced. Impressed with this phe- 

 nomenon, he began a series of experiments which finally 

 resulted in his great discovery. But be this story au- 

 thentic or not, it is certain that Galvani experimented 

 for several years upon frogs' legs suspended upon wires 

 and hooks, until he finally constructed his arc of two 

 different metals, which, when arranged so that one was 

 placed in contact with a nerve and the other with a 

 muscle, produced violent contractions. 



These two pieces of metal form the basic principle of 

 the modern galvanic battery, and led directly to Ales- 

 sandro Volta's invention of his "voltaic pile," the im- 

 mediate ancestor of the modern galvanic battery. 

 Volta's experiments were carried on at the same time 

 as those of Galvani, and his invention of his pile fol- 

 lowed close upon Galvani's discovery of the new form 

 of electricity. From these facts the new form of elec- 

 tricity was sometimes called "galvanic" and some- 

 times "voltaic" electricity, but in recent years the 

 term "galvanism" and "galvanic current" have al- 

 most entirely supplanted the use of the term voltaic. 



It was Volta who made the report of Galvani's won- 

 derful discovery to the Royal Society of London, read 

 on January 31, 1793. In this letter he describes Gal- 

 vani's experiments in detail and refers to them in 

 glowing terms of praise. He calls it one of the " most 



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