i HISTOBIOAL SKETCH. CHAP. I- 



his wife, and were accidentally lying ■within the in- 

 fluence of an electrical machine when in action. 

 Upon reading over the various accounts it appears 

 to me, that the accidental fact observed at the time, 

 and one of the most importance, was the follovring : 

 one of his assistants happened to touch the crural 

 nerves of a frog with the point of a scalpel, when 

 contractions of the muscles of the limbs occurred, 

 (a fact well known to physiologists of the present 

 day.) Galvani intuitively saw that effects were now 

 obtained by the mere point of the scalpel, similar to 

 those that had been previously observed when a 

 spark or a shock from the conductor of an electrical 

 machine traversed the nerve of the animal. Here 

 was a new cause producing muscular contractions, a 

 new source of power. It was no longer necessary to 

 have the electrical machine, the mere point of the 

 scalpel was sufficient. 



From our present position we may readily con- 

 ceive the train of ideas and questions that passed 

 through Galvani's mind. A new fact was to be 

 accounted for. Why, he might have asked, should 

 not the cause exist in the animal body, for we have 

 the developement of the power in the fish, as indi- 

 cated by the shock, which is similar to that of a 

 charged Leyden jar, and this shock depends upon 

 the will of the animal. 



The experiments of Gaivani were repeated in 

 various ways, and by other experimentalists, and 

 amongst them Volta stands preeminent. The facts 



