GALVANI, DISCOVERER OF ANIMAL ELECTRICITY.
It is a well-known fact, often commented on in the history of medicine,
that Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, did not
give the details of his discovery to the public for some twenty years
after he had first reached it. The reason for his delay was twofold.
With the characteristic patience of a real investigator in science,
Harvey wanted to work out the details of his discovery for himself
before giving it to the public, and wished to be sure of all he would
have to say about it before committing it to print. He had not, as had
indeed none of the really great discoverers in science, that intense
desire for publicity which causes smaller men to rush into print with
their embryonic discoveries, or oftener, their supposed discoveries, the
moment they get their first distant glimpse of a new truth or see some
mirage of a distant scientific principle, perhaps already well known, in
their heated imaginations. Small men squabble about priority in small
discoveries, and rush headlong into print, lest some one should
anticipate their wonderful observation. The example of Harvey can
scarcely be commended too highly, for if followed, it would save the
world of science a lot of bother and obviate the necessity of taking
back many things that have been proclaimed in the name of science.
Fortunately, it has been the rule among genuine students of science, not
because of any deliberate imitation of their great predecessors, but
because of modest assurance of the worth of their work and honest desire
to perfect it before giving it to the world.
Luigi, or, as he preferred to be known himself, Aloysio Galvani, for the
young prince of the house of Gonzaga whose canonization made him St.
Aloysius was his patron in baptism and a favorite in life, presents an
interesting exemplification of this characteristic trait of the really
great discoverer in science, to wait calmly and work faithfully for
thorough confirmation of his views before publishing them. His admirable
patience in reaching the real significance of his discovery before
proclaiming the results of his investigations is only a typical
illustration of the modest thorough scientist that he was. It used to be
said that Galvani's discovery of the twitchings of the frog's legs,
which led him to give himself to serious investigations into animal
electricity, was made more or less by accident in 1786. His views on the
subject of animal electricity were not formally published until the
appearance of his treatise, De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari
Commentarius, in the eighth volume of the Memoirs of the Institute of
Science of Bologna, published in 1791. This would seem to indicate that
only five years elapsed between his original observation and the
publication of his views. Even this interval may seem long enough to our
modern notions of at least supposed rapidity of scientific progress,
but we know now, from documents in the possession of the Institute of
Science at Bologna, that, twenty years previous to the publication of
this commentary, Galvani was deeply interested in the action of
electricity upon the muscles of frogs, and was diligently and fruitfully
occupied during his spare time with investigations upon this subject.
When, in Makers of Modern Medicine,[18] I called special attention to
the fact that practically all of the greatest discoverers in medicine
had made their cardinal discovery, or at least the far-reaching
observation that opened up for them the special career in investigation
that was to make them famous, before they were thirty-five, one of my
critics doubted the assertion and suggested the case of Galvani as a
distinct exception. Ordinarily, it is presumed that his discovery of the
twitchings of frogs' legs under the influence of electricity was made in
1786, when he was in his forty-ninth year. As a matter of fact, however,
his first observations were made and his attention attracted to the
importance of the subject when he was scarcely more than thirty. His
career is indeed a striking example of the earliness in life at which a
great man's work is likely to come to him, and yet illustrates very
aptly the patience with which he devotes himself to it, without seeking
the idle reputation to be derived from immediate announcement, if he
really has the true spirit of the scientific investigator.
Galvani began original work of a high order very early in his medical
career. His graduation thesis on the human skeleton treated especially
of the formation and development of bone, and attracted no little
attention. It is noteworthy because of the breadth of view in it, for it
touches on the various questions relative to osteology, from the
standpoint of physics and chemistry, as well as medicine and surgery. It
was sufficient to obtain for its author the place of lecturer in anatomy
in the University of Bologna, besides the post of director of the
teaching of anatomy in the Institute of Sciences, a subsidiary
institution. Here, from the very beginning, Galvani's course was
popular. He was not, as we note elsewhere, a fluent talker, but he was
one of the first who introduced experimental demonstrations of his
subject into his lectures, and this made his teaching very attractive
and drew crowds to his university courses.
Galvani's work as an anatomist, however, was done much more in
comparative anatomy than in the study of the human being. He selected
birds for the special subject of his first investigations in the field,
and his monograph on the kidneys of birds attracted widespread attention
among the scientists of Europe. As the farthest removed from man of the
beings that are warm-blooded, these creatures have always attracted
particular attention, and, quite apart from any interest in evolution,
were the subject of special investigation. Owing to the facility with
which they can be studied in embryonic stages in the hatching egg, most
of the peculiarities of their structure and development are very well
known now. The kidneys of the bird are especially interesting, because
they represent a different phase of development from that of human
beings. Galvani had selected, then, one of the cardinal or turning-point
subjects in comparative anatomy. As he pointed out very clearly, the
kidneys of birds differ very much among themselves, and the intense
muscular action of this creature makes a large amount of excretory
material, that must be disposed of, and consequently demands much more
active kidney function than occurs in most other classes of animals.
Galvani studied every feature--the vessels, the nerves, the canals--and
almost necessarily pointed out many new points or added hitherto unknown
details.
He next devoted himself to the study of the ear of the bird. This might
seem to be of little special interest, since hearing is not one of the
most characteristic qualities of the winged species. It so happens,
however, that the semi-circular canals which are closely connected with
the auditory apparatus in all animals are extremely large in birds. As a
consequence of this, the avian auditory structures assume an importance
in comparative anatomy quite like that of the kidneys in the same
species. After Galvani had completed his studies, he found that he had
been anticipated by another great Italian anatomist of the time, Antonio
Scarpa (of Scarpa's triangle in human anatomy), who afterwards became
the Chief Surgeon to Napoleon. Galvani abandoned the idea of publishing
his book then, but published a short article, in which he added much to
Scarpa's details and conclusions. His additions were particularly with
regard to the semi-circular canals, which are probably the organ of
direction, the necessity for which, in this species, for the purpose of
flying, is so easy to understand. He also described with great care the
single ossicle or small bone, which replaces the chain of little bones
that exist in mammal ears, and pointed out that the shape of this bone
and its appendages enabled it to fulfil, though single, all the
functions of the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup bones in human
beings.
Galvani's careful study of the semi-circular canals of various species
of birds can perhaps be better appreciated from the fact that he made it
a point to measure their size exactly, as compared to the semi-circular
canals of most other creatures. He found that the semi-circular canals
of the hawk, for instance, were larger than the corresponding structures
in man or even in the cow or the horse. As these latter animals are many
hundred times larger than the largest birds, the special significance of
the canals in birds becomes manifest. In certain of the birds, as he
pointed out, these structures are not semi-circles, nor indeed of
circular form at all, but take on much more the shape of an ellipse,
and, indeed, sometimes the arc of curvature of the ellipse is quite
acute. He seems to have had no hint, however, of the function that we
have in modern times assigned to these structures, that of presiding
over direction and equilibrium, and discusses in his rather vigorous
Latin what the physiological significance of them may be as regards
hearing. He thinks that they add something to the acuity of hearing, and
would seem to imply that in birds flying rapidly through the air, there
was the necessity for a more perfect hearing apparatus than among other
creatures, and that this was the reason for the huge development of
their semi-circular canals.
At this time the science of comparative anatomy was just beginning to
attract widespread attention. John Hunter, in London, was doing a great
work in this line, which placed him in the front rank of contributors to
biology and collectors of important facts in all the sciences allied to
anatomy and physiology. Galvani's work on birds, then, made him a
pioneer in the biological sciences that were to attract so much
attention during the nineteenth century. His experimental work in
comparative anatomy, strange as it might seem, and apparently not to be
expected, led him into the domain of electricity, through the
observation of certain phenomena of animal electricity and the effects
of electrical currents on animals.
Like so many other great discoveries in science, Galvani's first
attraction to his subject of animal electricity is often said to have
been the result of a happy accident. Of course it is easy to talk of
accidents in these cases. Archimedes and his bath; the fall of the apple
for Newton; Laennec's observation of the boys tapping on a log in the
courtyard of the Louvre and the ready conduction of sound, from which he
got his idea for the invention of the stethoscope; Lord Kelvin's
eye-glass falling and showing him how a weightless arm for his
electrometer might be obtained in a beam of light,--may all be called
happy accidents if you will. Without the inventive scientific genius
ready to take advantage of them, however, these accidents would not have
been raised to the higher plane of important incidents in the history of
science. These phenomena had probably occurred under men's eyes hundreds
of times before, but there was no great mind ready to receive the seeds
of thought suggested, nor to follow out the conclusions so obviously
indicated. Galvani's observation of the twitching of the muscles of the
frog under the influence of electricity, may be called one of the happy
accidents of scientific development, but it was Galvani's own genius
that made the accident happy.
There are two stories told as to the method of the first observation in
this matter. Both of them make his wife an important factor in the
discovery. According to a popular but less authentic form of the
history, Galvani was engaged in preparing some frogs' legs as a special
dainty for his wife, who was ill and liked this delicacy very much. He
thought so much of her that he was doing this himself, in the hope that
she would be thus more readily tempted to eat them. While so engaged, he
exposed the large nerve of the animal's hind legs, and at the same time
split the skin covering the muscles. In doing this he touched the nerve
muscle preparation, as this has come to be called, with the scalpel and
the forceps simultaneously, with the result that twitchings occurred.
While seeking the cause of these twitchings, the idea of animal
electricity came to him.
The other form of the story is told a little later in Galvani's own
words in the analysis of his monograph on animal electricity. He does
not mention his wife in it, but there is a tradition that she was
present in the laboratory when the phenomenon of the twitching of the
frog's legs was first noticed, and indeed that it was she who called his
attention to the curious occurrence.
She was a woman of well-developed intellect, and her association with
her father and also with her husband made her well acquainted with the
anatomy and physiology of the day. She realized that what had occurred
was quite out of the ordinary. She is even said to have suggested their
possible connection with the presence and action of the electric
apparatus. Husband and wife, then, together, by means of a series of
observations determined that, whenever the apparatus was not in use the
phenomenon of the convulsive movements of the frog's legs did not take
place, notwithstanding irritation by the scalpel. Whenever the electric
apparatus was working, however, then the phenomenon in question always
took place. According to either form of the story, if we accept the
traditions in the matter, Madame Galvani had an important part in the
discovery.
Galvani's most important contribution to science is undoubtedly his De
Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius--Commentary on the
Forces of Electricity in Their Relation to Muscular Motion. Like many
another epoch-making contribution to science, it is not a large work,
but in his collected works in the edition of 1841, occupies altogether
sixty-four pages, of scarcely more than two hundred and fifty words to
the page. There are probably not more than fifteen thousand words in it
altogether. It was published originally in the eighth volume of the
Memoirs of the Institute of Science at Bologna, in 1791, but a reprint
of it, with some modifications, was issued at Modena in the following
year. This Modenese edition, published by the Societa Typographica, was
annotated by Professor Giovanni Aldini, who also wrote an accompanying
dissertation, De Animalis Electricae Theoriae Ortu Atque Incrementis, On
the Rise and Development of the Theory of Animal Electricity. In this
volume was also published a letter from Galvani to Professor Carminati,
in Italian, on the Seat of Animal Electricity. These two editions are
the sources to which we must turn for whatever Galvani tried to make
known with regard to animal electricity.
This little volume consists of four parts: the first of which is devoted
to a consideration of the effects of artificial electricity on muscular
motion; the second is on the effect of atmospheric electricity on
muscular motion; the third is on the effect of animal electricity on
muscular motion; and the fourth consists of a series of conjectures and
some conclusions from his observations. The arrangement of the work, as
can readily be understood from this, is thoroughly scientific. Galvani
proceeds from what was best known and most evident to what he knew less
about, trying to enlarge the bounds of knowledge and then suggesting the
conclusions that might be drawn from his work and offering a number of
hints as to the possible significance of many of the phenomena that
might form suggestive material for further experimentation along this
same line. In spite of the forbiddingness of the Latin to a modern
scientist, as a rule, the little work is well worthy of study because of
its eminently scientific method and the excellent evidence it affords of
the way serious students of science approached a scientific thesis
before the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The first paragraph of this dissertation is of such fundamental
significance, because it represents the primal work done in animal
electricity, that it has seemed to me worth while presenting entire. The
original Latin from which the translation is made, and from which a good
idea of Galvani's Latin style may be obtained, is given in a note.[17]
"I had dissected a frog and had prepared it, as in Figure 2 of the fifth
plate (in which is shown a nerve muscle preparation), and had placed it
upon a table on which there was an electric machine, while I set about
doing certain other things. The frog was entirely separated from the
conductor of the machine, and indeed was at no small distance away from
it. While one of those who were assisting me touched lightly and by
chance the point of his scalpel to the internal crural nerves of the
frog, suddenly all the muscles of its limbs were seen to be so
contracted that they seemed to have fallen into tonic convulsions.
Another of my assistants, who was making ready to take up certain
experiments in electricity with me, seemed to notice that this happened
only at the moment when a spark came from the conductor of the machine.
He was struck with the novelty of the phenomenon, and immediately spoke
to me about it, for I was at the moment occupied with other things and
mentally preoccupied. I was at once tempted to repeat the experiment, so
as to make clear whatever might be obscure in it. For this purpose I
took up the scalpel and moved its point close to one or the other of the
crural nerves of the frog, while at the same time one of my assistants
elicited sparks from the electric machine. The phenomenon happened
exactly as before. Strong contractions took place in every muscle of the
limb, and at the very moment when the sparks appeared, the animal was
seized as it were with tetanus."
Galvani then explains in detail how he made observations on control
frogs at moments when there were no electric sparks, and decided that
the contact with the scalpel was only effective in producing twitchings
when there was a simultaneous electric spark. He noted, also, that
occasionally the contractions did not occur, in spite of the fulfilment
of the conditions mentioned. He traced this to fatigue. He then
proceeded to vary the experiment in many ways, decreasing the size of
the scalpel, increasing and decreasing the size of the electric machine
and varying the method of preparation of the frog, so as to decide just
what the significance of the phenomenon was. In a general way, it may be
said that this study shows Galvani as one of the most careful of
experimentalists, though he has often been declared to be a theorizer,
rather than an observer.
A very interesting anticipation of Galvani's original experiment, made
long before his time by a great naturalist, the story of which serves to
show that discoveries made before their time, that is, before people are
ready to follow them up, fail to attract attention, has been called to
my attention by Brother Potamian. In the second volume of the Dutch
Naturalist Swammerdam's Works, page 839, is to be found the following
passage:[14] "Another experiment that is at once very curious and
suggestive can be made if one separates the largest of the muscles of
the thigh of the frog and so prepares it with its adherent nerve as to
leave it unhurt. If after this has been done you take the tendons of
this muscle, one in each hand, and irritate the hanging nerve by a
little forceps or other instrument, the muscle will recover the former
motion which it had lost. You will see at once that it contracts and
that there will be an effort as it were to bring together the two hands
which hold its tendons. This I demonstrated, in the year 1658, to the
illustrious Duke of Tuscany then reigning, when he was at the moment in
a state of mind that prompted him not to favor me. This same experiment
can be repeated with the same muscle as often and for as long a time as
any portion of the nerve remains uninjured, so that we may, therefore,
irritate the muscle to its former contraction as often as we wish."
As a foundation classic in electricity, Galvani's De Viribus
Electricitatis deserves more detailed analysis. The first part of the
monograph is taken up with experiments of many kinds, with what may be
called artificial sources of electricity--the electric machine, the
Leyden jar, and other modes of electrical development. The second part
treats of the effects of atmospheric electricity upon muscular motion,
by which expression Galvani means lightning, though he also observed
various electrical manifestations in the muscles of his frogs when there
was no actual lightning but only darkening of the heavens, without
actual passage of the current flash from one cloud to another or from
the clouds to the earth. In this matter, Galvani displayed quite as much
courage as patient observation. He knew the fate of Richmann, the
Russian scientist, who had been struck dead by a lightning-bolt while
making experiments not very different, yet he dared to place a lightning
conductor on the highest point of his house, and to this conductor he
attached a wire, which ran down to his laboratory. During a storm, he
suspended on this metallic circuit, by means of their sciatic nerves,
frogs' legs and the legs of other animals prepared for the purpose. To
the feet of the animals he attached another Wire sufficiently long to
reach down to the bottom of a well, thus grounding the circuit.
Not satisfied with this study of the influence of lightning and large
electrical disturbances in the air on the preparation of the frog as he
had made it, Galvani set about discovering whether even the slight
differences in electrical potential which occur during the day in
atmospheric electricity might not give rise, even in fair weather, to
certain contractions of the frog's muscles. He made his observations for
many days at many different hours and under varying conditions of light
and shade, of heat and cold, without finding anything. There were
occasional contractions, but they bore no definite relation to
variations in the atmosphere, or the electric state of the atmosphere.
Galvani satisfied himself of this very thoroughly, and with a patience
and diligence worthy of emulation by a Fellow at a modern university
working on a foundation for the determination of a particular question.
The third part of the work is the most important as well as the
longest, and contains the ideas which are original with Galvani, but
which met most opposition in his time and have only been properly
appreciated in recent years. Galvani came to the conclusion that there
is such a thing as animal electricity. This led to a famous controversy
with Volta, in which their contemporaries judged that Galvani had the
worst of it; but, as so often happens, their successors a century later
would judge that Galvani's views were more in accord with what we know
at the present time. Criticism is always easier than scientific advance,
and in a controversy it is usually the man who writes most forcibly,
rather than the one who thinks most deeply, who secures the assent of
readers. This makes controversy in matters of science always
unfortunate, for it does much more to retard than to help scientific
progress.
Galvani insists, at the end of this chapter on animal electricity, that
what he writes is entirely the result of experiment, and that he has
tried in every way to make his experiments from a thoroughly critical
standpoint. Those who repeat his observations will find this to be true,
though he confesses that there are times when conditions not well
understood seem to hinder the results that he usually obtained.
The fourth part of his commentary is taken up with certain conjectures,
as he calls them, and some conclusions from his work. In this he
suggests the use of electricity for the cure of certain nervous
diseases, and especially for the treatment of the various forms of
paralysis. The use of electricity for these cases had been previously
suggested, and Bertholinus had told the story of patients who were
utterly unable to move and who had recovered after having been in the
neighborhood where a lightning-bolt had struck. To the minds of
physicians of that time, this must have seemed proof positive of the
curative value of lightning, and, therefore, of electricity, for
paralytic conditions. The remedy was heroic, if not indeed positively
risky, but its good effect could not be doubted. Unfortunately, as is
always true in medical matters, the real question at issue in these
cases is not so much the value of the remedy as the propriety of the
diagnosis. Paralysis, in the sense of inability to use one or more
limbs, may be due to many causes. There are a number of forms of
functional or hysterical palsy, that is, of incapacity to use certain
groups of muscles not dependent on any organic lesion, but upon some
curious state of the nervous system which may pass away entirely, and
which, indeed, seem to be dependent on the patient's state of mind. A
number of so-called paralytic patients were cured by the earthquake in
San Francisco; some are made to do the apparently impossible every year;
they get up and walk because of the shock due to a fire or burglars. We
know now that the electrical status of the individual is very carefully
protected from disturbance by external electrical forces. What Galvani
began has borne fruit in diagnosis more than treatment, so that his
prophecy has been amply fulfilled. "The application of this method may
throw light on the subject and experience may help us to understand it."
Among his conclusions, Galvani hints that electricity may not only
proceed from the clouds during electrical disturbances, but also may
proceed from the earth itself, and that living beings may be affected by
this. He suggests, therefore, that plants and animals may be influenced
in their growth and in their health by such electrical changes. He adds
the suggestion that there may be some intimate connection between
electrical phenomena and earthquakes, and suggests that, in countries
where earthquakes are frequent, observations should be made by means of
frogs' limbs in order to see whether there may not be some definite
change in the electrical conditions of the atmosphere before and during
the earthquake. He seems to have had some idea that the curious feelings
which at times come before an earthquake to human beings, though they
seem even more noticeable in animals, may be due to this change in
atmospheric electricity.[13]
We are rather prone to think that news of scientific discoveries
traveled slowly in Europe in the eighteenth century. There is abundant
evidence of the contrary in these sketches of electricians, and
Galvani's case is one of the most striking. How much attention Galvani's
discovery attracted and how soon definite details of it spread to the
other end of Europe may be judged from the fact that, in 1793, Mr.
Richard Fowler published a small book at Edinburgh bearing the title,
Experiments and Observations Relative to the Influence Lately
Discovered by M. Galvani, and commonly called Animal Electricity.[15]
This little book, which may be seen at the Surgeons General Library,
Washington, and in the Library of the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers, New York, details a large number of experiments that Fowler
had made during the preceding year or more, so that Galvani's work must
have reached him within a few months after its publication. Fowler
mentions the fact that Galvani had been occupied many years before this
in the study of electric fishes, especially the _torpedo_, the
_gymnotus electricus_ and _silurus electricus_. He also mentions a
curious observation of Cotugno, who, a few years before, had received a
shock from a mouse while dissecting the little animal, which makes it
clear that imagination played a role in helping to the introduction of
the newer ideas with regard to animal electricity.[16]
But before his discovery was to attract so much attention, Galvani had
to work it out, and this is the merit of the man.
It is almost needless to say, these experiments upon frogs were not
accomplished in a few days or a few weeks. Galvani had his duties as
Professor of Anatomy to attend to besides the obligations imposed upon
him as a busy practitioner of medicine and surgery. At that time, it was
not nearly so much the custom as it is at the present, to use frogs for
experiments, with the idea that conclusions might be obtained of value
for the biological sciences generally, and especially for medicine.
There has always been such an undercurrent of feeling, that such
experiments have been more or less a beating of the air. Galvani found
this opposition not only to his views with regard to animal electricity
as enunciated after experimental demonstration, but also met with no
little ridicule because of the supposed waste of time at occupations
that could not be expected to lead to any practical results. It was the
custom of scientific men to laugh somewhat scornfully at his patient
persistence in studying out every detail of electrical action on the
frog, and one of the supposedly prominent scientists of the time even
dubbed him "the frog dancing master." This did not, however, deter
Galvani from his work, though some of the bitter things must have proved
cutting enough, and might have discouraged a smaller man, less confident
of the scientific value of the work that he was doing.
His relations with his patients--for during all of his career he
continued to practice, especially surgery and obstetrics--were of the
friendliest character. While his distinction as a professor at the
University gave him many opportunities for practice among the rich, he
was always ready and willing to help the poor, and, indeed, seemed to
feel more at home among poor patients than in the society of the wealthy
and the noble. Even toward the end of his life, when the loss of many
friends, and especially his wife, made him retire within himself much
more than before, he continued to exercise his professional skill for
the benefit of the poor, though he often refused to take cases that
might have proved sources of considerable gain to him. Early in life,
when he was very busy between his professorial work and his practice, he
remarked more than once, on refusing to take the cases of wealthy
patients, that they had the money with which to obtain other physicians,
while the poor did not, and he would prefer to keep some time for his
services to them. When ailing and miserable toward the end of his life,
he still continued his practice, and was especially ready to spend his
time with the poor. He was dying himself, as one of his biographers
says, when he got up from a sick bed to see a dying woman who sent for
him.
He was one of the most popular professors that the University of Bologna
ever had. He was not, in the ordinary sense of the word, an orator, but
he was a born teacher. The source of the enthusiasm which he aroused in
his hearers was undoubtedly his own love for teaching and the power it
gave him to express even intricate problems in simple, straightforward
language. More than any of his colleagues, he understood that
experiments and demonstrations must be the real groundwork of the
teaching of science. Accordingly, very few of his lectures were given
without the aid of these material helps to attract attention. Besides,
he was known to be one who delighted to answer questions, and was
perfectly frank about the limitations of his knowledge whenever there
was no real answer to be given to a question that had been proposed.
Though an original discoverer of the first rank, he was extremely
modest, particularly when talking about the details of his discoveries
or subjects relating to them.
Galvani was not a good talker, though he seems to have been a good
teacher. He had little of that facility which wins friends easily and
enables a man to shine with a borrowed lustre of knowledge, often enough
quite superficial. What he said was almost sure to have a very serious
meaning. While there is no doubt that Galvani was a genius, in the sense
that he was one of the precious few who take the step across the
boundary of the unknown and make a path along which it is easy for
others to follow in reaching hitherto trackless regions in human
speculation, he also had what is undoubtedly the main element in talent,
for he was possessed to a high degree of the faculty for hard work. For
this he regulated the hours of his labor very carefully. Only thus could
he have accomplished what he did. It must not be forgotten that he was
teaching anatomy and obstetrics at the University of Bologna, and,
surprising as it may seem, doing both these tasks well. He was besides
accomplishing good work in comparative anatomy and physiology by
original investigations of a high order. In spite of all this, which
would seem occupation enough and more for any one man, he was able to
keep up a rather demanding practice.
He did not have many friends, but those whom he admitted to his intimacy
were bound to him with the proverbial hoops of steel. With two men in
Bologna he spent most of his leisure. They were Dr. Julio Cæsare
Cingari, a distinguished physician of the city, and the well-known
astronomer who held the chair of astronomy at the University, Francisco
Sacchetti. With these he passed many a pleasant hour, and week after
week they met at one another's houses to discuss scientific questions
and the lighter topics of the day. Galvani was thoroughly respected by
all the members of the Faculty at Bologna, though he did not seek many
friendships, and indeed probably would have more or less resented the
intrusions of acquaintances, because of the time that it would take from
him. He was a very retiring man, caring not at all for social things,
and least of all for that personal fame which has been so well defined
as the being known by those whom one does not know. His happiness in
life came to him from his work and from his domestic relations. His wife
was one of those marvelous women, rarer than they should be, one is
tempted to say, who are enough interested in their husband's
intellectual work to add to the zest of discovery in the discussion of
it with them, and who yet realize that it is by minimizing the little
worries of life that they can best help their husbands.
A very interesting phase of the Italian University life of that time is
revealed in two important incidents of Galvani's university career. One
of his professors--one, by the way, for whom he seems to have had a
great deal of respect, and to whose lectures he devoted much attention,
was Laura Caterina Maria Bassi, the distinguished woman Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Bologna, about the middle of the
eighteenth century. It is doubtless to her teaching that Galvani owes
some of his thorough-going conservatism in philosophic speculation, a
conservatism that was of great service to him later on in life, in the
midst of the ultra-radical principles which became fashionable just
before and during the French Revolution. Madame Bassi seems to have had
her influence on him for good not only during his student career, but
also later in life, for she was the wife of a prominent physician in
Bologna, and Galvani was often in social contact with her during her
years of connection with the University.
As might, perhaps, be expected, seeing that his own happy domestic life
showed him that an educated woman might be the center of intellectual
influence, Galvani seems to have had no spirit of opposition to even the
highest education for women. This is very well illustrated by the first
formal lecture in his course on anatomy at the University, which had for
its subject the models for the teaching of anatomy that had been made by
Madame Manzolini.[12] In the early part of the eighteenth century,
Madame Manzolini had been the Professor of Anatomy at the University of
Bologna, and in order to make the teaching of this difficult subject
easier and more definite, she modeled with great care and delicate
attention to every detail, so that they imitated actual dissections of
the human body very closely, a set of wax figures, which replaced the
human body for demonstration purposes, at least at the beginning of the
anatomical course.
Galvani, in taking up the work of lecturer in anatomy, appreciated how
much such a set of models would serve to make the introduction to
anatomical study easy, yet at the same time without diminishing its
exactness, and accordingly introduced his students to Madame Manzolini's
set of models in his very first lecture. At the time, not a few of the
teachers of anatomy at the Italian universities were inclined to
consider the use of these models as rather an effeminate proceeding.
Galvani's lack of prejudice in the matter shows the readiness of the man
to accept the best, wherever he found it, without regard to persons or
feelings.
Galvani's personal character was very pleasant, yet rather grave and
serious. His panegyrist, Professor Giuseppe Venturoli, in the eulogium
of Galvani, delivered in the Public Academy of the Institute of Bologna
(1802) within five years after Galvani's death, says that Galvani was
far from that coldness or lack of interest which sometimes characterizes
scientists in their social relations, and which, as he naïvely says, is
sometimes praised and sometimes blamed by those who write about them.
Another side of Galvani's character is more interesting. He was ready to
do all in his power for the poor. He conducted his obstetrical clinic
particularly with a liberal benevolence and charity that deserve to be
mentioned. When it is considered how much time his teaching and his
charity took from him, it is rather surprising to find that he had
enough left to enable him to devote himself with so much success to the
difficult tasks he set himself in research and to the time-taking labors
of controversy, which occupied many years after the announcement of his
discoveries.
The most striking proof of the thorough conscientiousness with which he
faced the duties of life is to be found in his conduct after the
establishment of the so-called Cis-Alpine Republic in Italy. This was a
government established merely by force of arms, maintained through
French influence, without the consent of the people, and a plain
usurpation of the rights of the previous government. Galvani considered
himself bound in duty to the authority under which he had lived all his
previous life and to which he had sworn fealty. When the University of
Bologna was reorganized under the new government, the first requirement
of all those who were made professors was that they should take the oath
of allegiance to the new government. This he refused to do. His motives
can be readily understood, and though practically all the other
professors of the University had taken the oath, he did not consider
that this freed him from his conscientious obligations in the matter.
Accordingly he was dropped from the roll of professors and deprived of
the never very large salary which he had obtained from this chair. On
this sum he had practically depended for his existence, and he began to
suffer from want. While he had been a successful practitioner of
medicine, especially of surgery, he had always been very liberal, and
had spent large sums of money in demonstrations for his lectures and
personal experimentation and in materials for the museums of the
University. He began to suffer from actual want, and friends had to come
to his assistance. He refused, however, to give up his scruples in the
matter and accept the professorship which was still open to him.
Finally, at the end of two years, influence was brought to bear on the
new government, and Galvani was allowed to accept his chair in the
University without taking the oath of allegiance. This tribute came too
late, however, and within a short time after his restoration to his
professorship he died.
Galvani's conduct in this affair is the key-note to his character and
conduct through life. For him duty was the paramount word, and success
meant the accomplishment of duty. For getting on in the world and
material rewards he had no use unless they came as the consequence of
duty fulfilled. His action in the matter of the University professorship
has of course been much discussed by his biographers.
His eulogist, Professor Venturoli, whom we have already quoted, and
whose eulogium is to be found in the complete edition of Galvani's works
issued at Bologna in 1841,[11] has much to say with regard to Galvani's
religious sentiments.
He says: "The great founder in electricity was deeply religious, and his
piety clothed a heart that was not less affectionate and sensitive to
affection than it was intrepid and courageous. When called upon to take
the civic oath in a formula involved in ambiguous words, he did not
believe that he ought, on so serious an occasion, to permit himself
anything but the clear and precise expression of his sentiments, full as
they were of honesty and rectitude. Refusing to take advantage of the
suggestion that he should modify the oath by some declaration apart from
the prescribed formula, though it might still be generally understood
that he had taken the oath, he refused constantly to commit himself to
any such subterfuge. It is not our duty here to ask whether his
conclusion was correct or not. He followed the voice of his conscience,
which ever must be the standard of duty, and it certainly would have
been a fault to have deviated from it. It is sad to think that this
great man, deprived of his position, saw himself, for an instant at
least, exposed to the danger of ending his career, deprived of the
recompense which he so richly deserved and to which his past services to
the State and the University had given him so just a title. This is all
the more sad when we realize that the vicissitudes of his delicate
health, much more than his age, now rendered such recompense doubly
necessary. It is a gracious thing to recall, however, the noble firmness
with which he maintained himself against so serious a blow. His courage
is all the more admirable as one can see how absolutely without
affectation it is. He was not ostentatious in his goodness, and did not
permit himself to be cast down by the unfortunate conditions, but
constantly preserved in the midst of adverse fortune that modest,
imperturbable and dignified conduct which had always characterized him
in the midst of his prosperity and his glory."
That his action in this matter was very properly appreciated by his
contemporaries, and that the moral influence of his example was not
lost, can be realized from the expressions used by Alibert, the
Secretary-General of the Medical Society of Emulation, in the historical
address on Galvani which he delivered before that society in Paris in
1801:
"Galvani constantly refused to take the civil oath demanded by the
decrees of the Cis-Alpine Republic. Who can blame him for having
followed the voice of his conscience--that sacred, interior voice which
alone prescribes the duties of man and which has preceded all human
laws? Who could not praise him for having sacrificed all such exemplary
resignation, all the emoluments of his professorship, rather than
violate the solemn engagements made under religious sanction?"
In the same panegyric there is a very curiously interesting passage with
regard to Galvani's habit of frequently closing his lectures by calling
attention to the complexity yet the purposefulness of natural things,
and the inevitable conclusion that they must have been created with a
definite purpose by a Supreme Being possessed of intelligence. At the
time that Alibert wrote his memoir, it was the fashion to consider, at
least in France, that Christianity was a thing of the past, and that
while theism might remain, that would be all that could be expected to
survive the crumbling effect of the emancipation of man.
He says: "We have seen already what was Galvani's zeal and his love for
the religion which he professed. We may add that, in his public
demonstrations, he never finished his lectures without exhorting his
pupils to a renewal of their faith, by leading them always back to the
idea of the eternal Providence which develops, preserves and causes life
to flow among so many different kinds of things. I write now," he
continues, "in the age of reason, of tolerance and of light. Must I then
defend Galvani in the eyes of posterity for one of the most beautiful
sentiments that can spring from the nature of man? No; and they are but
little initiated in the saner mechanism of philosophy who refuse to
recognize the truths established on evidence so strong and so authentic.
_Breves haustus in philosophia ad atheismum ducunt, longiores autem
reducunt ad Deum_--Small draughts of philosophy lead to atheism, but
longer draughts bring one back to God"--(which may be better translated,
perhaps, for English readers by Pope's well known lines, "A little
learning [in philosophy] is a dangerous thing; drink deep or touch not
the Pierian spring").
Galvani has been honored by his fellow-citizens of Bologna as one of
their greatest townsmen, and by the University as one of her worthiest
sons. In 1804, a medal was struck in his honor, on the reverse of which,
surrounding a figure of the genius of science, were the two legends:
"Mors mihi vita," "Death is life for me," and "Spiritus intus alit,"
"The spirit works within," which were favorite expressions of the great
scientist while living, and are lively symbols of the spirit which
animated him. In 1814, a monument was erected to him in the courtyard of
the University of Bologna. It is surmounted by his bust, made by the
most distinguished Bolognian sculptor of the time, De Maria. On the
pedestal there are two figures in bas-relief, executed by the same
sculptor, which represent religion and philosophy, the inspiring genius
of Galvani's life.
Before he died, he asked, as had his favorite poet Dante, whose Divina
Commedia had been one of the pleasures of life and above all one of the
consolations of his times of adversity, to be buried in the humble habit
of a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. He is said to have valued
his fellowship with the sons of the "poor little man of Assisi" more
than the many honorary fellowships of various kinds which had been
conferred upon him by scientific societies all over Europe. With him
passed away one of the great pioneers of modern science and one of the
most lovable men in all the history of science. His death took place
just before the close of the eighteen century, Dec. 4, 1798, but his
work was destined to be one of the harbingers of a great period of
electrical development.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Fordham University Press, 1906.
[12] Ranam dissecui, atque praeparavi ut in fig. 2 Tab. V.
eamque in tabula, omnia mihi alia proponens, in qua erat mechina
electrica fig. 1, collocavi ab ejus conductore penitus sejunctam, atque
haud brevi intervallo dissitam; dum scalpelli cuspidem unus ex iis, qui
mihi operam dabant, cruralibus hujus ranae internis nervis DD casu vel
leviter admoveret, continuo omnes artuum musculi ita contrahi visi sunt,
ut in vehementiores incidisse tonicas convulsiones viderentur. Eorum
vero alter, qui nobis electricitatem tentantibus praesto erat,
animadvertere sibi visus est, rem contingere dum ex conductere machinae
scintilla extorqueretur fig. 1 B. Rei novitatem ille admiratus de eadem
statim me alia omnino molientem ac mecum ipso cogitantem admonuit. His
ego incredibili cum studio, et cupiditate incensus idem experiundi, et
quod occultum in re esset in lucem pro ferendi admovi propterea et ipse
scalpelli cuspidem uni vel alteri crurali nervo, quo tempore unus
aliquis ex iis, qui aderant, scintillam eliceret. Phoenomenon eadem
omnino ratione contigit; vehementes nimirum contractiones in singulos
artum musculos, perinde ac si tetano praeparatum animal esset correptum,
eodem ipso temporis momento inducebantur, quo scintillae
extorquerentur.
[13] For the sake of those who might care to see how the great
Dutch naturalist expressed these curious scientific notions in Latin,
the original text seems worth while giving.
"Jucundissimum porro juxta ac utilissimum experimentum aliud institui
potest, si quidam e maximis Musculis de Ranae Femore separetur, atque
una cum adhaerente suo Nervo ita praeparetur, ut hic illaesus permaneat.
Quodsi enim, hoc peracto, utrumque Musculi hujus Tendinem a, a manibus
prehenderis. Nervumque ejus propendentem forsicula aliove quodam
instrumento de in irritaveris b; pristinum, quem amiserat, motum suum
mox recuperabit Musculus. Videbis hinc ilico eum contrahi, binasque
manus, quae Tendines ejus adtinent, ad se mutuo veluti adducere: prout
olim jam, anno 1658, Illustrissimo Duci Hetrusco, cummaxime regnanti,
demonstravi; quum Is immerito sane favore ad me invisere non
dedignaretur. Hoc ipsum veto experimentum eodem in Musculo tam crebro &
diu reiterari potest, donec ulla Nervi pars illaesa fuerit: ut ideo
toties sic ad pristinam contractionem suam lacessere Musculum valeamus,
quoties nobis libuerit."
[14] With Galvani's attention to medical electricity, it is not
surprising that for several years, beginning with 1873, an Italian
medical journal called Il Galvani, with the sub-title Giornale di
Elettro-Idro-ed Aero Terapia, was published at Milan. Its directors were
the brothers Themistocles and Ulysses Santopadre. Those who think that
an exaggeration of claims for electrical influence on various diseases
is of comparatively recent date, will do well to consult that journal.
The prophylaxis of yellow-fever is suggested by means of static
electricity. The cause of yellow-fever is declared to be a disturbance
of the electro-magnetic conditions of the body. Everything, from skin
diseases to uterine inertia, chloroform asphyxia, aphasia, and the
various forms of paralysis, and Basedow's disease, are described as
cured by electrical treatment. So does science become the nursing mother
of quackery.
[15] Edinburgh, 1793.
[16] In 1795, one of the theses presented for the Fellowship of
the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh was on the subject of
Galvanism, or at least on Galvani's work, by Francis Barker, who signs
himself Hibernicus, an evidence of the fact that Irishmen often went to
Edinburgh for their scientific training. This thesis serves to show that
Galvani's work was already attracting the attention even of the most
distant of Western Universities.
[17] It is interesting to note that the two successful
inventions for lessening the necessity for deterrent dissecting work are
due to women--Professor Manzolini and her wax models, and Alessandra
Giliani, the assistant of Mondino, Father of Dissection, (d. 1320), who
knew how "to fill the veins with various colored fluids which would
harden, and paint these same vessels and color them so naturally that
they brought Mondino great fame and credit." (Old Chronicler.)
[18] Opere Edite ed Inedite del Professore Luigi Galvani
Raccolte e Pubblicate Per Cura Dell'Accademia Delle Scienze
Dell'Instituto Di Bologna, Bologna Tipografia Di Emilio Dall'Olmo.
MDCCCXLI.