Luigi Galvani

Biography

• Born 9 September 1737 Bologna, Italy
• 1775 – Chair of anatomy, University of Bologna
• 1782 – Professor of obstetrics, University of Bologna
• 1797 – Refused to swear oath to the Cisalpine Republic, the new state renounced his academic and public positions. Galvani lost his financial income and home, he moved in with his brother and died within a year depressed and in poverty.
• Died 4 December 1798 Bologna, Italy

Medical Eponyms

• Galvanic cell, Galvani potential,
• Galvanic corrosion
• Galvanization – and the origin of the metaphorical use of the verb “galvanize”
• The Galvanometer –  instrument for measuring (and recording) electricity – this is essentially what an ECG is; a sensitive galvanometer.
• Medicine: Galvanic skin response.

Key Medical Attributions

Galvani noted that a dissected frog’s leg twitches when touched with a metal scalpel. He had been studying the effects of electricity on animal tissues that summer. On 20th September 1786 Galvani wrote

I had dissected and prepared a frog in the usual way and while I was attending to something else I laid it on a table on which stood an electrical machine at some distance from its conductor and separated from it by a considerable space. Now when one of the persons present touched accidentally and lightly the inner crural nerves of the frog with the point of a scalpel, all the muscles of the legs seemed to contract again and again as if they were affected by powerful cramps.

Galvani showed that direct contact with the electrical generator or the ground through an electrical conductor would lead to a muscle contraction. Using brass hooks attached to frog’s spinal cord suspended from an iron railing, he noticed that the frogs’ legs twitched during lightening storms and also when the weather was fine…

Galvani interpreted these results in terms of ‘animal electricity’ or the preservation in the animal of ‘nerveo-electrical fluid’ similar to that of an electric eel. He later also showed that electrical stimulation of a frog’s heart leads to cardiac muscular contraction.

Alessandro Volta, Italian Scientist and inventor, attempts to disprove Galvani’s theory of “animal electricity'” by showing that the electrical current is generated by the combination of two dissimilar metals.

Major Publications

• Galvani L. De viribus Electritatis in motu musculari Commentarius. 1791
• Galvani L. Memorie sulla elettricità animale. Bologna. 1797
• Galvani L. Opere edite ed inedite del professore Luigi Galvano: [Edited and unpublished works by Professor Luigi Galvani]. 1841.

References

• Piccolino M. Luigi Galvani’s path to animal electricity. C R Biol. 2006 May-Jun;329(5-6):303-18
• Piccolino M. Animal electricity and the birth of electrophysiology: the legacy of Luigi Galvani. Brain Res Bull. 1998 Jul 15;46(5):381-407.
• Fowler R. Experiments and observations relative to the influence lately discovered by M. Galvani, and commonly called animal electricity. 1793.
• Bibliography. Galvani, Luigi 1737-1798. WorldCat Identities
• Eponymythology. History of the Electrocardiogram. LITFL