Galvani, LUIGI

Galvani, LUIGI, a famous anatomist, was born at Bologna, 9th September 1737, studied theology and subsequently medicine at the university there, and in 1762 was elected professor of Anatomy. His lectures enjoyed much popularity, and among other writings two treatises on the organs of hearing and on the genito-urinary tract in birds added considerably to his reputation. But Galvani owes the wide celebrity attached to his name to his discoveries in animal electricity. The story of the convulsive muscular movements produced in a skinned frog by a chance contact with a scalpel may be dismissed as unfounded; there is evidence that Galvani's views were based on experiments patiently conducted for many years before the publication of his De viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius (1791). He was removed for a time from his post because of his refusal to take the oaths prescribed by the Cisalpine Republic, of which Bologna then formed a part; but he was afterwards reinstated, and died 4th December 1798, in Bologna, where his statue was erected in 1879. Most of his writings were published in a quarto edition in 1841-42 by the Academy of Sciences of his native city; but several manuscript treatises by him were discovered there in April 1889.