GALVA'NI, ALOYSIUS (Lewis), was descended from a respectable family of Bologna, which had produced several distiuguished men of letters. He was born in that town in 1737, and in consequeeco of a religious turn of mind which be strongly displayed during his child hood, was at first designed for holy orders and to take the monastic vows. lie afterwards changed hie intentions while studying at the university of Bologna, and married the daughter of his tutor Galeazzi, who was a professor at that university, and with whom he had for some time lived on terms of close intimacy. his degree of M.D. was conferred In 1762, and his fame had so far increased that he received the appointment of Lecturer on Medicine at the Institute of his native town. In the 'Memoirs' of this body we find contributions on various medical subjects by GalvauL Ile also published separately ' Observations on the Urinary Organs,' sod 'On the Organs of Hearing in Birds;' but an accidental circumstance, of which he availed himself with acuteness and much judgment, introduced him to a novel subject, the announcement of which at that time excited deep attention throughnut Europe, and gave birth to a new and fruitful branch of physics, which yet retains in all countries the name of its first observer.
During his temporary absence from his house, his wife, who was about to prepare some soup from frogs, having taken off their skins, laid them on a table in the studio near the conductor of an electrical machine which bad been recently charged. She was much surprised, upon touching them with the scalpel (which must have received a spark from the machine), to observe the muscles of the frogs strongly convulsed. She acquainted him with the facts upon his return. Galvani repeated the experiment, and found that it was necessary to peas a spark or communicate electricity through the metallic aubetance with which the frogs were touched. After having varied the expe riment in several ways, he was led to conclude that there existed an animal electricity both in nerves and muscles, and some future expe riments appearing favourable to that erroneous inference, he seems to have clung to that opinion during the remainder of his life, notwith standing the experiments of Volta and others, which showed at least that the moisture on the surface of the frog acted as a conductor.
The following circumstance was that on which Galvaui most relied for the accuracy of his opinion :—Having seen the effects of the direct electricity of the machine on the muscles of frogs, and that by exposing only the spine, legs, and connecting nerves to tho electrical action a very small charge was sufficient to produce the convulsive motions; be imagined that the atmospheric electricity, though of feeble tension, might be sufficient to produce like results. He therefore suspended some frogs thus prepared by metallic hooks to iron railings, when he observed that the convulsed motions depended on the position of the frog relative to the metals. The same phenomenon led Volta to an opposite conclusion, and a war of opinion for some time divided philosophers. Into this dispute it will not be necessary now to enter; ultimately Volta triumphed over Galvani, but failed to convince him.
The work in which Galvani developed his views relative to this new class of phenomena was published in 1701, under the title Aloysii Oalvani de viribus Electricitails in Motu Musculari Commentarius,' in which he Infers that the bodies of animals possess a peculiar kind of electricity, by which motion is communicated by nerve to muscle, and in these experiments he regarded the metals acting only as con ductors betwecu these substances, which he thought accounted for the observed contractions of the muscle, in the samo manner that the dissimilar electricities on the interior and exterior surfaces of a Leyden jar reunite with explosion through a metallic conductor. If the reader is desirous to make an experiment of this kind, let him separate the head and upper parts of the body of a frog, remove tho akin from the legs, clear out the abdomen, separate the spine below the origin of the sciatio nerves, that thoy alone may form the con nection with the legs; then envelop the spine and nerves with tinfoil, and, placing the legs on silver, complete the circuit by making the two metals touch : the oonvuLsive motions will be instantly produced.