GALVANI, gal-vii'n6, Lmot (1737-98). A famous Italian physician and anatomist, and the discoverer of current or 'galvanic' electricity. He was born at Bologna, and at an early age re linquished an intention of entering the Church, to follow the profession of medicine, devoting himself to the study of physiology and compara tive anatomy. He married the daughter of Ga lcazzi, a distinguished member of the medical faculty of Bologna, whom he succeeded in 1762 as professor of anatomy. His writings, though not numerous, contain valuable scientific matter, and are characterized by a rare precision and minuteness of detail. Two treatises which added considerably to his reputation are: Considera tions on the Urinary Organs of Birds, and On *the Organs of hearing of Birds. It is to a purely casual discovery, however, that Galvani owes the wide celebrity attached to his name. It is related that Galvani's wife happened one day to notice the convulsive muscular movements produced in a skinned frog when the nerve of the leg was accidentally touched by a scalpel which lay on the table, and had become charged by contact with an adjoining electric machine.
She communicated the phenomenon to her hus band, who instituted a prolonged series of ex periments (1790). He came to the conclusion that the source of electricity lay in the nerve, and that the metals which are necessary served mere ly as conductors. (See ELEcraicrrir; and ELEC TRICITY, ANIMAL.) In consequence of his refusal to take the oaths prescribed in 1797 by the Cisal pine Republic, of which Bologna formed a part, he was deprived of his position and income, but was subsequently restored. A statue of Galvani was unveiled at Bologna in 1879. His writings have been chiefly published in the memoirs of the Bologna Institute of Sciences, including the treatise entitled De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentaries (1792), which contained an account of his discovery and ex periments, and translated into German is to be found in Ostwald's Kiassiker der Exakten Wissenschaften, No. 52 (Leipzig, 1894). A com plete set of his works was published at Bologna in 1841. See GALVANIC BATTERY; VOLTAIC CELL OR BATTERY.