GALVANI, LUIGI (1737-1798), Italian physiologist, after whom galvanism received its name, was born at Bologna on Sept. 9, 1737. He was appointed public lecturer in anatomy at Bologna in 1762, and gained repute as a comparative anatom ist from his researches on the organs of hearing and genito urinary tract of birds. He enunciated his theory of animal elec tricity in a treatise published in 1791. Twenty years before he had begun his investigations as to the action of electricity upon the muscles of frogs. The observation that the suspension of frogs on an iron railing by copper hooks caused twitching in the mus cles of their legs led to the invention of his metallic arc, the first experiment with which is described in the third part of the Com mentary, under the date Sept. 20, 1786. The arc he constructed of two different metals, which, placed in contact the one with a frog's nerve and the other with a muscle, caused contraction of the latter. In Galvani's view the motions of the muscle were the result of the union, by means of the metallic arc, of its exterior or negative electrical charge with positive electricity which pro ceeded along the nerve from its inner substance. Volta, on the other hand, attributed them solely to the effect of electricity having its source in the junction of the two dissimilar metals of the arc, and regarded the nerve and muscle simply as conductors. Galvani died at Bologna, on Dec. 4, 1798.
A quarto edition of Galvani's works Opere edite ed inedite del pro f essore Luigi Galvani was published at Bologna in 1841-42 by the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of that city. See J. L. Alibert, Eloges historiques, pp. 187-338 (18o6).