Scientific Culture, and Other Essays / Second Edition; with Additions

by Jr. Josiah P. Cooke

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 endeavoring to sustain his false theory by experimental proofs, was led to the discovery of the Voltaic pile, or, as we now call it, the Voltaic battery, an instrument whose influence on civilization can be compared only with the printing-press and the steam-engine. Yet, although the whole action of the battery was in direct contradiction to his pet theory, still, to the last, Volta persistently defended the erroneous doctrine he had espoused in his controversy with Galvani thirty years before, and he died in 1827, without realizing how great a boon he had been instrumental in conferring on mankind; so true it is that Providence works out his bright designs even through the blindness and mistakes of man.

But there is another lesson to be learned from this history, which can not be too often rehearsed in this self-sufficient age, which boasts so proudly of its practical wisdom. There were, doubtless, many practical men in that city of Bologna to smile at their sage professor, who had spent ten long years in studying, to little apparent purpose, the twitchings of frogs' hind-legs, and there was many a jest among the courtiers of Europe at the expense of the learned philosophers who "wasted" so much time in discussing the cause of such trivial phenomena. But how is it now?

Less than a century has passed since Galvani's death, and in a small hut on the shores of Valentia Bay may be seen one of the most skillful of a new class of practical men, representing a profession which owes its origin to Galvani and Volta. The electrician is watching a spot of light on the scale of an instrument which is called a galvanometer. Since the fathers fell asleep, the field of knowledge which they first entered has spread out wider and wider before the untiring explorers who have succeeded them. Oersted and Seebeck, Arago and Ampère, Faraday and our own Henry, have made wonderful discoveries in that field; and other great men, like Steinheil, Wheatstone, Morse, and Thomson, have invented ingenious instruments and appliances, by which these discoveries might be made to yield great practical results.

The spot of light, which the electrician is watching, is reflected from one of the latest of these inventions, the reflecting galvanometer of Thomson. He and his assistants had been watching by turns the same spot for several days, since the Great Eastern had steamed from the bay, paying out a cable of insulated wire. These electricians had no anxiety as to the result, for daily signals had been exchanged between the ship and the shore, as hundreds after hundreds of miles of this electrical conductor had been laid on the bed of the broad ocean. The coast of Newfoundland had already been reached, and they were only waiting for the landing of the cable at the now far-distant end.

At length the light quivers, and the spot begins to move. It answers to concerted signals. And soon the operator spells out the joyful message. The ocean has been spanned with an electric nerve, and the New World responds to the greetings of the Old.

Here is something practical, which all can appreciate, and all are ready to honor. We honor the courage which conceived, the skill which executed, and, above all, the success which crowned the undertaking. But do we not forget that professor of Bologna, with his frogs' legs, who sowed the seed from which all this has sprung? He labored without hope of temporal reward, stimulated by the pure love of truth, and the grain which he planted has brought forth this abundant harvest. Do we not forget, also, that succession of equally noble men, Volta, and Oersted, and Faraday, with many other not less devoted investigators of electrical science, without whose unselfish labors the great result never could have been achieved? Such men, of course, need no recognition at our hands, and I ask the question not for their sakes, but for ours. The intellectual elevation of the lives they led was their all-sufficient reward.