GALVANI, gal-va'ne, Luigi, Italian physi ologist; the discoverer of galvanism: b. Bo logna, 9 Sept. 1737; d. there, 4 Dec. 1798. He studied medicine, and in 1762 entered on the practice of his profession. His favorite studies were anatomy and physiology. He soon re ceived the appointment of professor of anat omy in the celebrated university of his native city and published a treatise on the urinary organs of birds. While engaged in these pur suits he was fortuitously led to the discovery which has immortalized his name. It is related that his wife, the daughter of Galeazzi, a medi cal professor under whom he had studied, and a woman of superior intelligence, having ob served that the contact of the Inanimate body of a skinned frog with a scalpel lying on the table produced in the frog a series of remarkable muscular convulsions, the knife having been in contact with an electric machine, informed her husband of the fact, who instituted a series of experiments, and formed conclusions which led to a controversy with Volta. Galvani rightly
ascribed the convulsive movements to electricity, but erroneously concluded that the electricity was generated by nerves and muscles. On a journey to Sinigaglia and Rimini he was so fortunate as to trace the cause of the electric appearances which are observed in the torpedo, and wrote a learned treatise on this subject. The loss of his beloved wife in 1790 rendered him inconsolable. Having refused to take the oaths to the Cisalpine Republic in 1797, he was deprived of his chair, and refused to resume it, when the government, in consideration of his celebrity, offered to allow him to do so uncon ditionally.