Talk:Luigi Galvani

Frog's Leg
''The statement has frequently been repeated that, in 1786, Galvani had noticed that the leg of a skinned frog upon the muscles of frogs. The observation that the suspension of certain of these animals on an iron railing by copper hooks caused twitching in the muscles of their legs led him to the invention of his metallic arc, the first experiment with which is described in the third part of the Commentary, with the date September 20, 1786.'' --10 October 2005 (edit) (undo) User:Omegatron (Talk | contribs)


 * Good work, I added some of this. --Sadi Carnot 16:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've heard some things about Galvani's wife having something to do with the observation of that particular event, but can find nothing on the 'net about it. Anyone know anything about this? K K 08:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion about this date. A real proof is necessary. The discussion above states 1786, whereas early version of Wikipedia stated 1771 until the page was changed to 1780 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luigi_Galvani&diff=602378048&oldid=602156439): --Nabrufa (talk) 18:29, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Galvani's Wife & Earlier Bioelectricity Experiments
I'm writing a paper loosely related to Galvani's work right now, and have come across an account that does put his wife in the room with him (suggesting she was in fact the person to notice the frog's leg twitch). The book is by Herbert W. Meyer, called A History of Electricity & Magnetism (1971), published by MIT press.

Also, this book suggests that Galvani was not the first to observe the connection between animal matter and electricity, though he may have been the first to associate this phenomenon with nerve endings specifically. Apparently, some physiologists named Joseph and Caldani (French and Italian) noted the contractions of frog leg muscles under the influence of electricity in 1700, and Dutch biologist Jan Swammerdam also performed some similar experiments in 1752.

Can anyone confirm this?

Joannayo 16:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Only professor's daughter ever?
"In 1764 he married a well-liked woman of society named, Lucia Galleazzi, she is the only daughter of a professor at the University of Bologna." When I first read that, I laughed quite heartily at the thought of a thousand-year-old university, which had probably had thousands of professors, producing only one professor who ever had a daughter. Then I re-read it and realized that it meant that she was the only daughter of a specific person, which made me feel foolish.

Then I read it a third time, and realized that the wording itself is foolish as well. The professor is not named, so it seems like a generic use of any professor from that university in all of history. If a woman who has been dead for two centuries is referred to in the present tense "she is the only...." then it should refer to something that is ongoing and contemporary, such as a long-standing, utterly preposterous, unenforceable, and only-once-broken rule about a lack of daughters among University of Bologna professors. It sounds to me like you could perfectly modify it to say "she is to this date the only..." and achieve the same exact meaning... which is why I shall be tweaking it. Chaparral2J (talk) 12:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Source of "animal electricty"
Hi I read from a number of sites about Luigi Galvani's belief that the source of "animal electricty" was from a fluid secreted by the brain. Does anyone have any verification of this or sources that I can reference for the article?

-Bill-

June 9, 2008

Spool Testing ?
I removed this uncited sentence:
 * At first he thought about being a mechanic because he loved taking and dealing with spool testing.

Doesn't "spool testing" sound like a Monty Python phrase?

I have seen some vague evidence that Galvani was interested in contraptions and gadgets, but nothing worth citing. I'll do some more reading and if I can find more information about "spool testing" or "taking and dealing" I'll add it.

Caltrop (talk) 14:23, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

third order of Saint Francis
I read in the aritcle that "At first he wished to enter the church.".. It would be useful to add that he become member of the Third Order of Saint Francis. Anyway it's "Church" and not "church".--79.56.178.43 (talk) 06:38, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Why would that level of detail be important? Galvani's historical significance is in his scientific discoveries, not theology, religious works, or devotional example.  It seems the very definition of irrelevant trivia to me.  This is an encyclopedia entry, not an exhaustive biography.

Indeed, I am not at all clear why his religious beliefs have a separate section in the article. It does not seem appropriate for this particular personage any more than including the scientific views of a moral philosopher or faith leader would be.TheCormac (talk) 03:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Galvani banned from teaching and lost all his income
"In 1796, Napoleon and the French Army arrived at Bologna. One year later, they forced the professors of university and the civils servant to swear fidelity with the new mode, that is to say the Cisalpine Republic. Galvani refused to pronounce this oath which consisted in promising a feeling of hatred against any person and any institution who did not share the ideas of the revolution, for religious reason but also for a question of principle (considering the assent of the curia bolonaise). Thus after thirty-three years of teaching, it lost its station and all the remunerations from which it profited."

"He took refuge with his brother Giacomo and broke down completely through poverty and discouragement.".--79.56.178.43 (talk) 06:52, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

His wife Marcus?
"... especially after the death of his wife, Marcus, in 1840".

Actually, I believe his wife was called Caterina. --95.89.34.214 (talk) 22:04, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Luigi Galvani. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110613214747/http://137.204.24.205/cis13b/bsco3/Default.asp to http://137.204.24.205/cis13b/bsco3/Default.asp

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 10:50, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Uncited material in need of citations
I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 14:50, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Early life
...and Barbara was his fourth wife. His family was not aristocratic, but they could afford to send at least one of their sons to study at a university. At first, Galvani wished to enter the church, so he joined a religious order, the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, at 15 years old. He planned to take religious vows, but his parents persuaded him not to do so. Around 1755, Galvani entered the Faculty of the Arts of the University of Bologna. Galvani attended the medicine course, which lasted four years, and was characterized by its "bookish" teaching. Texts that dominated this course were by Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna.

Another discipline Galvani learned alongside medicine was surgery. He learned the theory and practice. This part of his biography is typically overlooked, but it helped with his experiments with animals and helped familiarize Galvani with the manipulation of a living body.

In 1759, Galvani graduated with degrees in medicine and philosophy. He applied for a position as a lecturer at the university. Part of this process required him to defend his thesis on 21 June 1761. In the following year, 1762, he became a permanent anatomist of the university and was appointed honorary lecturer of surgery. That same year he married Lucia Galeazzi, daughter of one of his professors, Domenico Gusmano Galeazzi. Galvani moved into the Galeazzi house and helped with his father-in-law's research. Lucia Galeazzi Galvani was actively engaged in the experiments; the couple also collaborated with Antonio Muzzi. When Galeazzi died in 1775, Galvani was appointed professor and lecturer in Galeazzi's place.

Galvani moved from the position of lecturer of surgery to theoretical anatomy and obtained an appointment at the Academy of Sciences in 1776. His new appointment consisted of the practical teaching of anatomy, which was conducted by human dissection and the use of the famous anatomical waxes. Lucia Galeazzi Galvani also was active as the medical assistant of her husband in his work as a surgeon and obstetrician. She additionally edited her husband's medical texts.

Appointed as a member of the select Benedictine Academy of Sciences, a papal institution with a generous stipend, Galvani had specific responsibilities. His main responsibility was to present at least one research paper every year at the Academy, which Galvani did until his death. There was a periodical publication that collected a selection of the memoirs presented at the institution and was sent around to main scientific academies and institutions around the world. However, since publication then was so slow, sometimes there were debates on the priority of the topics used. One of these debates occurred with Antonio Scarpa. This debate caused Galvani to give up the field of research on which he had presented for four years in a row: the hearing of birds, quadrupeds, and humans. Galvani had announced all of the findings in his talks but had yet to publish them. It is suspected that Scarpa attended Galvani's public dissertation and claimed some of Galvani's discoveries without crediting him.

The beginning of Galvani's experiments with bioelectricity has a popular legend which says that Galvani was slowly skinning a frog at a table where he and his wife had been conducting experiments with static electricity by rubbing frog skin. The Galvanis' assistant touched an exposed sciatic nerve of the frog with a metal scalpel that had picked up a charge. At that moment, they saw sparks and the dead frog's leg kicked as if in life. The observation made the Galvanis the first investigators to appreciate the relationship between electricity and animation—or life. This finding provided the basis for the new understanding that the impetus behind muscle movement was electrical energy carried by a liquid (ions), and not air or fluid as in earlier balloonist theories.

Galvani coined the term animal electricity to describe the force that activated the muscles of his specimens. Along with contemporaries, he regarded their activation as being generated by an electrical fluid that is carried to the muscles by the nerves. The phenomenon was dubbed galvanism, after Galvani and his wife, on the suggestion of his peer and sometime intellectual adversary Alessandro Volta. The Galvanis are properly credited with the discovery of bioelectricity. Today, the study of galvanic effects in biology is called electrophysiology, the term galvanism being used only in historical contexts.

Galvani vs. Volta
Volta's investigations led shortly to the invention of an early battery. Galvani believed that the animal electricity came from the muscle in its pelvis. Volta, in opposition, reasoned that the animal electricity was rather a metallic electricity caused by the interactions between the two metals involved in the experiment.

Thus, owing to an argument between the two in regard to the source or cause of the electricity, Volta built the first battery in order to specifically disprove his associate's theory. Volta's “pile” became known therefore as a voltaic pile.

After the controversy with Volta, Galvani kept a low profile partly because of his attitude towards the controversy, and partly because his health and spirits had declined, especially after the death of his wife, Lucia, in 1790.

Legacy

 * The crater Galvani on the Moon is named after him.
 * The Società Chimica Italiana awards the Luigi Galvani Medal to recognize the work of foreign electrochemists.
 * R&D bioelectronics company Galvani Bioelectronics is named after him
 * There is a statue of Galvani in his native Bologna in the eponymous Piazza Galvani.
 * There are streets named after Galvani in Le Havre, France; Antony, Hauts-de-Seine; Bolzano, South Tyrol; Bucharest, Romania and Linz (Austria)

Galvani-related landmarks in Bologna
Galvani’s home in Bologna has been preserved and can be seen in the central.

arguably Galvani worked for years trying to find the source of electricity that drives muscles. he used frog legs as a voltage detector .the yield of that research was the discovery that the electricity was stored in the ph of the body yet he didn't need to say it was in the acetylcholine(endo-nitric-acid-enzymes which emulate "zenotype" nitric acid), yet he alone discovered it could extract it by contact with 2 pieces of dissimilar metal electrically connected to each other. Volta simply used the acetylcholine of a lemon which is just another form of life. today we use lithium and PVC plastic and acid is phased out with the acceptation of petroleum powered cars using lead acid batteries built after "Galvani's discovery", not Volta. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan scott james (talk • contribs) 13:02, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you were thinking of "acetic acid", not acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter; but lemons and other citrus fruits are rich in a different organic acid, citric acid. But we should be working from Reliable Sources here, not personal opinions. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:08, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Galvani’s monument. In the square dedicated to him, facing the palace of the Archiginnasio, the ancient seat of the University of Bologna, a big marble statue has been erected to the scientist while observing one of his famous frog experiments.

Liceo Ginnasio Luigi Galvani. This secondary school (Liceo) dating back to 1860 was named after Luigi Galvani.