Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

Galvani insists, at the end of this chapter on animal electricity, that what he writes is entirely the result of experiment, and that he has tried in every way to make his experiments from a thoroughly critical standpoint. Those who repeat his observations will find this to be true, though he confesses that there are times when conditions not well understood seem to hinder the results that he usually obtained.

The fourth part of his commentary is taken up with certain conjectures, as he calls them, and some conclusions from his work. In this he suggests the use of electricity for the cure of certain nervous diseases, and especially for the treatment of the various forms of paralysis. The use of electricity for these cases had been previously suggested, and Bertholinus had told the story of patients who were utterly unable to move and who had recovered after having been in the neighborhood where a lightning-bolt had struck. To the minds of physicians of that time, this must have seemed proof positive of the curative value of lightning, and, therefore, of electricity, for paralytic conditions. The remedy was heroic, if not indeed positively risky, but its good effect could not be doubted. Unfortunately, as is always true in medical matters, the real question at issue in these cases is not so much the value of the remedy as the propriety of the diagnosis. Paralysis, in the sense of inability to use one or more limbs, may be due to many causes. There are a number of forms of functional or hysterical palsy, that is, of incapacity to use certain groups of muscles not dependent on any organic lesion, but upon some curious state of the nervous system which may pass away entirely, and which, indeed, seem to be dependent on the patient's state of mind. A number of so-called paralytic patients were cured by the earthquake in San Francisco; some are made to do the apparently impossible every year; they get up and walk because of the shock due to a fire or burglars. We know now that the electrical status of the individual is very carefully protected from disturbance by external electrical forces. What Galvani began has borne fruit in diagnosis more than treatment, so that his prophecy has been amply fulfilled. "The application of this method may throw light on the subject and experience may help us to understand it."

Among his conclusions, Galvani hints that electricity may not only proceed from the clouds during electrical disturbances, but also may proceed from the earth itself, and that living beings may be affected by this. He suggests, therefore, that plants and animals may be influenced in their growth and in their health by such electrical changes. He adds the suggestion that there may be some intimate connection between electrical phenomena and earthquakes, and suggests that, in countries where earthquakes are frequent, observations should be made by means of frogs' limbs in order to see whether there may not be some definite change in the electrical conditions of the atmosphere before and during the earthquake. He seems to have had some idea that the curious feelings which at times come before an earthquake to human beings, though they seem even more noticeable in animals, may be due to this change in atmospheric electricity.[14]

We are rather prone to think that news of scientific discoveries traveled slowly in Europe in the eighteenth century. There is abundant evidence of the contrary in these sketches of electricians, and Galvani's case is one of the most striking. How much attention Galvani's discovery attracted and how soon definite details of it spread to the other end of Europe may be judged from the fact that, in 1793, Mr. Richard Fowler published a small book at Edinburgh bearing the title, Experiments and Observations Relative to the Influence Lately Discovered by M. Galvani, and commonly called Animal Electricity.[15] This little book, which may be seen at the Surgeons General Library, Washington, and in the Library of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, New York, details a large number of experiments that Fowler had made during the preceding year or more, so that Galvani's work must have reached him within a few months after its publication. Fowler mentions the fact that Galvani had been occupied many years before this in the study of electric fishes, especially the torpedo, the gymnotus electricus and silurus electricus. He also mentions a curious observation of Cotugno, who, a few years before, had received a shock from a mouse while dissecting the little animal, which makes it clear that imagination played a role in helping to the introduction of the newer ideas with regard to animal electricity.[16]

But before his discovery was to attract so much attention, Galvani had to work it out, and this is the merit of the man.

It is almost needless to say, these experiments upon frogs were not accomplished in a few days or a few weeks. Galvani had his duties as Professor of Anatomy to attend to besides the obligations imposed upon him as a busy practitioner of medicine and surgery. At that time, it was not nearly so much the custom as it is at the present, to use frogs for experiments, with the idea that conclusions might be obtained of value for the biological sciences generally, and especially for medicine. There has always been such an undercurrent of feeling, that such experiments have been more or less a beating of the air. Galvani found this opposition not only to his views with regard to animal electricity as enunciated after experimental demonstration, but also met with no little ridicule because of the supposed waste of time at occupations that could not be expected to lead to any practical results. It was the custom of scientific men to laugh somewhat scornfully at his patient persistence in studying out every detail of electrical action on the frog, and one of the supposedly prominent scientists of the time even dubbed him "the frog dancing master." This did not, however, deter Galvani from his work, though some of the bitter things must have proved cutting enough, and might have discouraged a smaller man, less confident of the scientific value of the work that he was doing.

His relations with his patients—for during all of his career he continued to practice, especially surgery and obstetrics—were of the friendliest character. While his distinction as a professor at the University gave him many opportunities for practice among the rich, he was always ready and willing to help the poor, and, indeed, seemed to feel more at home among poor patients than in the society of the wealthy and the noble. Even toward the end of his life, when the loss of many friends, and especially his wife, made him retire within himself much more than before, he continued to exercise his professional skill for the benefit of the poor, though he often refused to take cases that might have proved sources of considerable gain to him. Early in life, when he was very busy between his professorial work and his practice, he remarked more than once, on refusing to take the cases of wealthy patients, that they had the money with which to obtain other physicians, while the poor did not, and he would prefer to keep some time for his services to them. When ailing and miserable toward the end of his life, he still continued his practice, and was especially ready to spend his time with the poor. He was dying himself, as one of his biographers says, when he got up from a sick bed to see a dying woman who sent for him.

He was one of the most popular professors that the University of Bologna ever had. He was not, in the ordinary sense of the word, an orator, but he was a born teacher. The source of the enthusiasm which he aroused in his hearers was undoubtedly his own love for teaching and the power it gave him to express even intricate problems in simple, straightforward language. More than any of his colleagues, he understood that experiments and demonstrations must be the real groundwork of the teaching of science. Accordingly, very few of his lectures were given without the aid of these material helps to attract attention. Besides, he was known to be one who delighted to answer questions, and was perfectly frank about the limitations of his knowledge whenever there was no real answer to be given to a question that had been proposed. Though an original discoverer of the first rank, he was extremely modest, particularly when talking about the details of his discoveries or subjects relating to them.

Galvani was not a good talker, though he seems to have been a good teacher. He had little of that facility which wins friends easily and enables a man to shine with a borrowed lustre of knowledge, often enough quite superficial. What he said was almost sure to have a very serious meaning. While there is no doubt that Galvani was a genius, in the sense that he was one of the precious few who take the step across the boundary of the unknown and make a path along which it is easy for others to follow in reaching hitherto trackless regions in human speculation, he also had what is undoubtedly the main element in talent, for he was possessed to a high degree of the faculty for hard work. For this he regulated the hours of his labor very carefully. Only thus could he have accomplished what he did. It must not be forgotten that he was teaching anatomy and obstetrics at the University of Bologna, and, surprising as it may seem, doing both these tasks well. He was besides accomplishing good work in comparative anatomy and physiology by original investigations of a high order. In spite of all this, which would seem occupation enough and more for any one man, he was able to keep up a rather demanding practice.

He did not have many friends, but those whom he admitted to his intimacy were bound to him with the proverbial hoops of steel. With two men in Bologna he spent most of his leisure. They were Dr. Julio Cæsare Cingari, a distinguished physician of the city, and the well-known astronomer who held the chair of astronomy at the University, Francisco Sacchetti. With these he passed many a pleasant hour, and week after week they met at one another's houses to discuss scientific questions and the lighter topics of the day. Galvani was thoroughly respected by all the members of the Faculty at Bologna, though he did not seek many friendships, and indeed probably would have more or less resented the intrusions of acquaintances, because of the time that it would take from him. He was a very retiring man, caring not at all for social things, and least of all for that personal fame which has been so well defined as the being known by those whom one does not know. His happiness in life came to him from his work and from his domestic relations. His wife was one of those marvelous women, rarer than they should be, one is tempted to say, who are enough interested in their husband's intellectual work to add to the zest of discovery in the discussion of it with them, and who yet realize that it is by minimizing the little worries of life that they can best help their husbands.