Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/633

Rh The patient waiting had been rewarded, for this observation was the beginning of a line of discovery which was ere long to revolutionize the world. But Galvani was not destined to follow far the new path he had thus opened. The remarkable fact observed was this: The convulsions of the frog's legs could be produced without the intervention of electricity, or, at least, of the one kind of electricity then known, and Galvani soon found out that the only condition necessary to produce the result was, that the nerve of the frog should be connected with the muscle of the leg by some good electrical conductor. But, although Galvani followed up this observation with the greatest zeal, and showed remarkable sagacity throughout his whole investigation, yet he was too strongly wedded to his own theory to interpret correctly the facts he observed. He supposed, to the end of his life, that the whole effect was caused by animal electricity flowing through the conductor from the nerve to the muscle, and his experiments were chiefly interesting to himself and to his contemporaries, from the light they were supposed to throw on the mysterious principle of life. We now know that animal electricity played only a small part in the phenomena he observed, and that the chief effects were due to a cause of which he was wholly ignorant.

Galvani published his observations in 1791, in a monograph entitled "The Action of Electricity in Muscular Motion." This publication excited the most marked attention, and, within a year, all Europe was experimenting on frogs' legs. The phenomena were everywhere reproduced, but Galvani's explanation of the phenomena was by no means so universally accepted. His theory was controverted in many quarters, and by no one more successfully than by Alexander Volta, Professor of Physics in the neighboring University of Pavia. Volta, while admitting, with Galvani, that the muscular contractions were caused by electricity, explained the origin of the electricity in a wholly different way. According to Volta, the electricity originated not in the animal, but in the contact of the dissimilar metals, or other materials used in the experiment. This difference of opinion led to one of the most remarkable controversies in the history of science, and for six years, until his death in 1798, Galvani was occupied in defending his theory of animal electricity against the assaults of his distinguished countryman.

This discussion created the liveliest interest throughout Europe. Every scholar of science took sides with one or the other of these eminent Italian philosophers, and the scientific world became divided into the school of Galvani and the school of Volta. Yet, so far at least as the fundamental experiment was concerned, both were wrong. The electricity came neither from the body of the frog nor from the contact of dissimilar kinds of matter, but was the result of chemical action, which both had equally overlooked. But, nevertheless, the controversy led to the most important results: for Volta, while