Lewis Galvani
in William Nicholson's British
Encyclopedia; or, Dictionary of arts and sciences. Comprising an accurate
and popular view of the present improved state of human knowledge. 6
vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809), III,
unpaginated.
GALVANI (Lewis) a modern physiologist, who has had the honour of giving his
name to a supposed new principle in nature, was born in 1737, at Bologna,
where several of his relations had distinguished themselves in
jurisprudence and theology. From his early youth he was much disposed to
the greatest austerities of the Catholic religion, and particularly
frequented a convent, the monks of which attached themselves to the solemn
duty of visiting the dying. He shewed an inclination to enter into this
order, but was diverted from it by one of the fraternity. Thenceforth he
devoted himself to the study of medicine in its different branches. His
masters were the Doctors Beccari, Jacconi, Galli, and especially the
professor Galeazzi. who received him into his house, and gave him his
daughter in marriage. In 1762, he sustained with reputation an inaugural
thesis "De Ossibus," and was then created public lecturer in the University
of Bologna, and appointed reader in anatomy to the institute in that city.
His excellent method of lecturing drew a crowd of auditors, and he employed
his leisure in experiments and in the study of comparative anatomy. He made
a number of curious observations on the urinary organs, and on the organ of
hearing in birds, which were published in the Memoirs of the Institute. His
reputation, as an anatomist and physiologist, was established in the
schools of Italy, when accident gave birth to the discovery which has
immortalised his name. His beloved wife, with whom he lived many years in
the tenderest union, was at this time in a declining state of health. As a
restorative, she made use of a soup of frogs; and some of these animals,
skinned for the purpose, happened to lie upon a table in her husband's
laboratory, upon which was placed an electrical machine. One of the
assistants in his experiments chanced carelessly to bring the point of a
scalpel near the crural nerves of a frog, lying not far from the conductor.
Instantly the muscles of the limb were agitated with quick convulsions.
Madame Galvani, a woman of quick understanding, and a scientific turn, was
present, and, struck with the phenomenon, she immediately went to inform
her husband of it. He came and repeated the experiment; and soon found that
the convulsion only took place when a spark was drawn from the conductor,
at the time the scalpel was in contact with the nerve. It is unnecessary in
this place to mention the series of experiments by which he proceeded to
investigate the law of nature, of which accident had thus given him a
glimpse, for which our article GALVANISM must
be consulted.
In conjunction with these enquiries, his duties as a professor, and his
employment as a surgeon and accoucheur, in which branches he was very
eminent, gave full occupation to his industry. He drew up various memoirs
upon professional topics, which have remained unedited, and regularly held
learned conversations with a few literary friends, in which new works were
read and commented upon. He was a man of an amiable character in private
life, and possessed of great sensibility, which he had the misfortune of
being called to display on the death of his wife in 1790, an event which
threw him into a profound melancholy. He rarely suffered a day to pass
without visiting her tomb in the nunnery of St. Catherine, and pouring out
his prayers and lamentations over her remains. He was always, indeed,
punctual in practising the minutest rites of his religion, the early strong
impressions of which never left him, and this attachment to religion was
probably the cause of [his] steadily refusing to take the civic oath
exacted by the new constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in consequence
of
which he incurred the deprivation of his posts and dignities. A prey to
melancholy, and reduced almost to indigence, he retired to the house of his
brother James, a man of very respectable character, and there fell into a
state of languor and almost imbecility. The republican governors, probably
ashamed of their conduct towards such a man, passed a decree for his
restoration to his professional chair and its emoluments; but it then was
too late. He died on November 5, 1798, at the age of sixty, amid the
tears of his friends, and the public regret.
