1840.] The Galvanic Battery. 1171 



of an active electrical machine, and the subsequent discovery that the 

 same movements were produced by touching the limbs with two pieces 

 of different metals, led him to announce that he had discovered a new 

 kind of electricity resident in the muscles of animals. This announce- 

 ment caused great excitement among men of science at the time, and 

 Galvani's experiments were repeated, with various modifications, in all 

 parts of Europe, being viewed with much curiosity, and giving rise to 

 numerous speculations. The convulsions in the limbs of the frog only 

 took place, it was observed, while sparks passed from the machine, and 

 this fact therefore proved no more than that the muscles or nerves, or 

 the two together, formed a very sensitive indicator of electrical action. 

 It is on the subsequent remark, that by the contact of dissimilar 

 metals, the same convulsions were produced, the science of Galvanism 

 is founded. 



The theory by which Galvani accounted for the phenomena he had 

 discovered, was that the electricity originating in the brains of animals 

 is distributed to every part of their systems, and resides especially in 

 the muscles. The different parts of each muscular fibril he conceived 

 to be in opposite states of electrical excitement, and the contractions 

 to be produced whenever the electric equilibrium was restored. This 

 during life was effected through the medium of the nerves, and after 

 death by the intervention of metallic conductors. To the metals 

 themselves he traced none of the peculiar effects produced, considering 

 them quite passive, and only necessary as furnishing channels of 

 conduction for the animal electricity. 



These opinions of Galvani were very decidedly opposed, and foremost 

 among his opponents stood Alex. Volta, Professor of Natural Philoso- 

 phy at Pavia. By him it was maintained that the electricity was 

 developed entirely by the contact of the two metals, and that the 

 muscular convulsions were merely the effects of the passage of the 

 electricity, thus developed, through the nerves and muscles of the 

 animal. The views of Volta were far clearer and more distinct 

 than those of Galvani, and to him belongs the true credit of having 

 called into being the science, which in compliment to him, has been 

 called Voltaic electricity as well as Galvanism. The latter is perhaps 

 the more common of the two, and I have therefore retained it in 

 this paper, but it must be remarked, that the term Galvanic Battery 



