CHAPTER II.
Reception and Confirmation of the Discovery of Voltaic Electricity.
GALVANI’S experiments excited a great interest all over Europe, in consequence partly of a circumstance which, as we have seen, was unessential, the muscular contractions and various sensations which they occasioned. Galvani himself had not only considered the animal element of the circuit as the origin of the electricity, but had framed a theory,[5] in which he compared the muscles to charged jars, and the nerves to the discharging wires; and a controversy was, for some time, carried on, in Italy, between the adherents of Galvani and those of Volta.[6]
[5] Ib. viii. 613.
[6] Ib. viii. 619.
The galvanic experiments, and especially those which appeared to have a physiological bearing, were verified and extended by a number of the most active philosophers of Europe, and especially William von Humboldt. A commission of the Institute of France, appointed in 1797, repeated many of the known experiments, but does not seem to have decided any disputed points. The researches of this [241] commission referred rather to the discoveries of Galvani than to those of Volta: the latter were, indeed, hardly known in France till the conquest of Italy by Bonaparte, in 1801. France was, at the period of these discoveries, separated from all other countries by war, and especially from England,[7] where Volta’s Memoirs were published.
[7] Biog. Univ., art. Volta, (by Biot.)
The political revolutions of Italy affected, in very different manners, the two discoverers of whom we speak. Galvani refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Cisalpine republic, which the French conqueror established; he was consequently stripped of all his offices; and deprived, by the calamities of the times, of most of his relations, he sank into poverty, melancholy, and debility. At last his scientific reputation induced the republican rulers to decree his restoration to his professorial chair; but his claims were recognised too late, and he died without profiting by this intended favor, in 1798.
Volta, on the other hand, was called to Paris by Bonaparte as a man of science, and invested with honors, emoluments, and titles. The conqueror himself, indeed, was strongly interested by this train of research.[8] He himself founded valuable prizes, expressly with a view to promote its prosecution. At this period, there was something in this subject peculiarly attractive to his Italian mind; for the first glimpses of discoveries of great promise have always excited an enthusiastic activity of speculation in the philosophers of Italy, though generally accompanied with a want of precise thought. It is narrated[9] of Bonaparte, that after seeing the decomposition of the salts by means of the voltaic pile, he turned to Corvisart, his physician, and said, “Here, doctor, is the image of life; the vertebral column is the pile, the liver is the negative, the bladder the positive, pole.” The importance of voltaic researches is not less than it was estimated by Bonaparte; but the results to which it was to lead were of a kind altogether different from those which thus suggested themselves to his mind. The connexion of mechanical and chemical action was the first great point to be dealt with; and for this purpose the laws of the mechanical action of voltaic electricity were to be studied.
[8] Becquerel, Traité d’Electr. t. i. p. 107.