20 Inaugural Address by the President. 



A year after the publications of his work, which naturally 

 excited the greatest interest, it was criticised by his great com- 

 patriot, Alessandro Volta,^ Professor of physics at Pavia. 

 Galvani's attention had been devoted to the nerves and muscles 

 of the frog. Volta's was directed upon the metallic matters in 

 contact with them. He emphasised (what Galvani had already 

 noticed) that strong muscular contractions were only obtained 

 when the connecting arc is composed of two metals in contact, 

 and he maintained that the electric current causing the muscular 

 contractions was produced at the contact or junction of the 

 metals ; and he describes this theory of his, without reticence or 

 modesty, as a discovery of the highest order. 



Had Volta's observations been made half a century later, 

 when the splendid researches of Faraday emphasized the 

 beginning of a more perfect knowledge, a truer view of science 

 would doubtless have supported and intensified the leaning 

 which he himself at first possessed towards the assumption that 

 the source of the electric action was to be found in the chemical 

 activities at the contact between the metals and the liquids of 

 the fresh animal tissues. 



That the electricity was produced by chemical action of 

 these fluids on the metals was indeed suggested by Fabroni,* 

 in 1792, and by Creve,^ whose explanation of the action bears 

 a quaint resemblance to that which a wider knowledge has 

 brought foith in modern times.* 



Volta, however, was carried away by the (merely apparent) 

 simplicity of the metallic contact theory and by the result of a 

 most ingenious form of experiment which seemed to preclude 

 the possibility of any such chemical action on the metals. The 

 apparatus used is represented by that on the table and is 

 known as Volta's condenser. Here the two metals are in the 

 form of plates, having plain surfaces, and mounted on insulating 

 supports so as to be capable of being approached very closely 

 to one another without touching. If when so approached the 



4. Wilkinson's Galvanism I, p. 313 — 15. 



5. Ibid, p. 311. 6. Ibid, p. 104. 



