Experiments and Observations

Richard Fowler

Richard Fowler

Experiments and Observations / Relative to the Influence Lately Discovered / by M. Galvani and Commonly Called Animal Electricity

PREFACE

The subject of the following experiments, has excited such general curiosity, that every new fact respecting it, may afford some gratification; and although the few which I have to offer, have not led me to what many may think very important conclusions, they will not I hope be found wholly undeserving of attention. The experiments were begun, with the view of ascertaining if the influence discovered by M. Galvani, be referrible to any known law of nature, or if it be itself a new law.

Finding that it indicated, with tolerable accuracy, the presence of very small degrees of the contractile power of muscles, without appearing in the least to diminish that power, as electricity and most other stimuli never fail to do; I thought it might be used with advantage, as a test, in the investigation of some important subjects in physiology; and I have accordingly employed it as such.

Every circumstance, observed in the course of these experiments, was carefully noted down, at the instant it occurred, and the greater number of these was made in the presence of gentlemen, whose accuracy I had reason to hope would detect any fallacy, which might have escaped myself. I have a particular pleasure, in expressing my obligation to Mr George Hunter of York, for the very friendly assistance which he afforded me, in almost every experiment, which rendered such assistance necessary.

В В В В Edin. May 28. }

В В В В 1793. }

SECTION I.

Are the Phenomena, exhibited by the Applicationof certain different Metalsto Animals, referrible to Electricity?

The whole train of circumstances, which preceded this discovery, had a tendency to occasion the belief of its relation to electricity.

Some accidental appearances, certainly electrical, excited, by their novelty, the attention of the Professor of Anatomy at Bologna, to the investigation of the possible, but unknown, dependencies of the motions of animals upon electricity; and the astonishing effects of that influence upon the human body, particularly in paralytic diseases, whether owing to derangements of the nerves, or of the muscles; the experiments, which prove that the fluids of animals are better conductors of electricity, than water is; and that, “if an electric shock pass through a given part of a living animal, the same shock, after the animal is dead, will be visibly transmitted over the surface of the part, but not through it[1 - Cavallo.]:” the recollection, too, of that singular power, which some animals possess, as the torpedo, the gymnotus electricus, and the silurus electricus, of collecting and discharging at pleasure the electrical fluid; but, above all, the wonderful, but solitary, instance of an electrical shock received from a mouse, under dissection, recently related by his countryman Cotugno; were circumstances, which seem to have rendered the expectations of the Professor not a little sanguine as to his success.

At length, after many ingenious and interesting experiments, illustrative of the relations which subsist between artificial electricity and the involuntary motions of animals, a happy accident discovered to him the phenomena, which have since been the objects of so much curious research, and which have given to immortality the name of Galvani.

He one day observed, that some frogs, hooked by the spine of the back, and suspended from the iron palisades, which surrounded his garden, contracted frequently and involuntarily. Examining minutely into the cause of these contractions, he found that he could produce them at pleasure, by touching the animals with two different metals, at the same time in contact with each other.

To a mind prepared by such observations and experiments as those which had previously occupied M. Galvani, the resemblance which this new discovery bore to the facts he had before observed, must have produced conviction of the identity of their c