It is a well-known fact, often commented on in the history of medicine, that Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, did not give the details of his discovery to the public for some twenty years after he had first reached it. The reason for his delay was twofold. With the characteristic patience of a real investigator in science, Harvey wanted to work out the details of his discovery for himself before giving it to the public, and wished to be sure of all he would have to say about it before committing it to print. He had not, as had indeed none of the really great discoverers in science, that intense desire for publicity which causes smaller men to rush into print with their embryonic discoveries, or oftener, their supposed discoveries, the moment they get their first distant glimpse of a new truth or see some mirage of a distant scientific principle, perhaps already well known, in their heated imaginations. Small men squabble about priority in small discoveries, and rush headlong into print, lest some one should anticipate their wonderful observation. The example of Harvey can scarcely be commended too highly, for if followed, it would save the world of science a lot of bother and obviate the necessity of taking back many things that have been proclaimed in the name of science. Fortunately, it has been the rule among genuine students of science, not because of any deliberate imitation of their great predecessors, but because of modest assurance of the worth of their work and honest desire to perfect it before giving it to the world.

Luigi, or, as he preferred to be known himself, Aloysio Galvani, for the young prince of the house of Gonzaga whose canonization made him St. Aloysius was his patron in baptism and a favorite in life, presents an interesting exemplification of this characteristic trait of the really great discoverer in science, to wait calmly and work faithfully for thorough confirmation of his views before publishing them. His admirable patience in reaching the real significance of his discovery before proclaiming the results of his investigations is only a typical illustration of the modest thorough scientist that he was. It used to be said that Galvani's discovery of the twitchings of the frog's legs, which led him to give himself to serious investigations into animal electricity, was made more or less by accident in 1786. His views on the subject of animal electricity were not formally published until the appearance of his treatise, De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius, in the eighth volume of the Memoirs of the Institute of Science of Bologna, published in 1791. This would seem to indicate that only five years elapsed between his original observation and the publication of his views. Even this interval may seem long enough to our modern notions of at least supposed rapidity of scientific progress, but we know now, from documents in the possession of the Institute of Science at Bologna, that, twenty years previous to the publication of this commentary, Galvani was deeply interested in the action of electricity upon the muscles of frogs, and was diligently and fruitfully occupied during his spare time with investigations upon this subject.

When, in Makers of Modern Medicine,[11] I called special attention to the fact that practically all of the greatest discoverers in medicine had made their cardinal discovery, or at least the far-reaching observation that opened up for them the special career in investigation that was to make them famous, before they were thirty-five, one of my critics doubted the assertion and suggested the case of Galvani as a distinct exception. Ordinarily, it is presumed that his discovery of the twitchings of frogs' legs under the influence of electricity was made in 1786, when he was in his forty-ninth year. As a matter of fact, however, his first observations were made and his attention attracted to the importance of the subject when he was scarcely more than thirty. His career is indeed a striking example of the earliness in life at which a great man's work is likely to come to him, and yet illustrates very aptly the patience with which he devotes himself to it, without seeking the idle reputation to be derived from immediate announcement, if he really has the true spirit of the scientific investigator.

Galvani began original work of a high order very early in his medical career. His graduation thesis on the human skeleton treated especially of the formation and development of bone, and attracted no little attention. It is noteworthy because of the breadth of view in it, for it touches on the various questions relative to osteology, from the standpoint of physics and chemistry, as well as medicine and surgery. It was sufficient to obtain for its author the place of lecturer in anatomy in the University of Bologna, besides the post of director of the teaching of anatomy in the Institute of Sciences, a subsidiary institution. Here, from the very beginning, Galvani's course was popular. He was not, as we note elsewhere, a fluent talker, but he was one of the first who introduced experimental demonstrations of his subject into his lectures, and this made his teaching very attractive and drew crowds to his university courses.

Galvani's work as an anatomist, however, was done much more in comparative anatomy than in the study of the human being. He selected birds for the special subject of his first investigations in the field, and his monograph on the kidneys of birds attracted widespread attention among the scientists of Europe. As the farthest removed from man of the beings that are warm-blooded, these creatures have always attracted particular attention, and, quite apart from any interest in evolution, were the subject of special investigation. Owing to the facility with which they can be studied in embryonic stages in the hatching egg, most of the peculiarities of their structure and development are very well known now. The kidneys of the bird are especially interesting, because they represent a different phase of development from that of human beings. Galvani had selected, then, one of the cardinal or turning-point subjects in comparative anatomy. As he pointed out very clearly, the kidneys of birds differ very much among themselves, and the intense muscular action of this creature makes a large amount of excretory material, that must be disposed of, and consequently demands much more active kidney function than occurs in most other classes of animals. Galvani studied every feature—the vessels, the nerves, the canals—and almost necessarily pointed out many new points or added hitherto unknown details.

He next devoted himself to the study of the ear of the bird. This might seem to be of little special interest, since hearing is not one of the most characteristic qualities of the winged species. It so happens, however, that the semi-circular canals which are closely connected with the auditory apparatus in all animals are extremely large in birds. As a consequence of this, the avian auditory structures assume an importance in comparative anatomy quite like that of the kidneys in the same species. After Galvani had completed his studies, he found that he had been anticipated by another great Italian anatomist of the time, Antonio Scarpa (of Scarpa's triangle in human anatomy), who afterwards became the Chief Surgeon to Napoleon. Galvani abandoned the idea of publishing his book then, but published a short article, in which he added much to Scarpa's details and conclusions. His additions were particularly with regard to the semi-circular canals, which are probably the organ of direction, the necessity for which, in this species, for the purpose of flying, is so easy to understand. He also described with great care the single ossicle or small bone, which replaces the chain of little bones that exist in mammal ears, and pointed out that the shape of this bone and its appendages enabled it to fulfil, though single, all the functions of the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup bones in human beings.

Galvani's careful study of the semi-circular canals of various species of birds can perhaps be better appreciated from the fact that he made it a point to measure their size exactly, as compared to the semi-circular canals of most other creatures. He found that the semi-circular canals of the hawk, for instance, were larger than the corresponding structures in man or even in the cow or the horse. As these latter animals are many hundred times larger than the largest birds, the special significance of the canals in birds becomes manifest. In certain of the birds, as he pointed out, these structures are not semi-circles, nor indeed of circular form at all, but take on much more the shape of an ellipse, and, indeed, sometimes the arc of curvature of the ellipse is quite acute. He seems to have had no hint, however, of the function that we have in modern times assigned to these structures, that of presiding over direction and equilibrium, and discusses in his rather vigorous Latin what the physiological significance of them may be as regards hearing. He thinks that they add something to the acuity of hearing, and would seem to imply that in birds flying rapidly through the air, there was the necessity for a more perfect hearing apparatus than among other creatures, and that this was the reason for the huge development of their semi-circular canals.

At this time the science of comparative anatomy was just beginning to attract widespread attention. John Hunter, in London, was doing a great work in this line, which placed him in the front rank of contributors to biology and collectors of important facts in all the sciences allied to anatomy and physiology. Galvani's work on birds, then, made him a pioneer in the biological sciences that were to attract so much attention during the nineteenth century. His experimental work in comparative anatomy, strange as it might seem, and apparently not to be expected, led him into the domain of electricity, through the observation of certain phenomena of animal electricity and the effects of electrical currents on animals.

Like so many other great discoveries in science, Galvani's first attraction to his subject of animal electricity is often said to have been the result of a happy accident. Of course it is easy to talk of accidents in these cases. Archimedes and his bath; the fall of the apple for Newton; Laennec's observation of the boys tapping on a log in the courtyard of the Louvre and the ready conduction of sound, from which he got his idea for the invention of the stethoscope; Lord Kelvin's eye-glass falling and showing him how a weightless arm for his electrometer might be obtained in a beam of light,—may all be called happy accidents if you will. Without the inventive scientific genius ready to take advantage of them, however, these accidents would not have been raised to the higher plane of important incidents in the history of science. These phenomena had probably occurred under men's eyes hundreds of times before, but there was no great mind ready to receive the seeds of thought suggested, nor to follow out the conclusions so obviously indicated. Galvani's observation of the twitching of the muscles of the frog under the influence of electricity, may be called one of the happy accidents of scientific development, but it was Galvani's own genius that made the accident happy.

There are two stories told as to the method of the first observation in this matter. Both of them make his wife an important factor in the discovery. According to a popular but less authentic form of the history, Galvani was engaged in preparing some frogs' legs as a special dainty for his wife, who was ill and liked this delicacy very much. He thought so much of her that he was doing this himself, in the hope that she would be thus more readily tempted to eat them. While so engaged, he exposed the large nerve of the animal's hind legs, and at the same time split the skin covering the muscles. In doing this he touched the nerve muscle preparation, as this has come to be called, with the scalpel and the forceps simultaneously, with the result that twitchings occurred. While seeking the cause of these twitchings, the idea of animal electricity came to him.

The other form of the story is told a little later in Galvani's own words in the analysis of his monograph on animal electricity. He does not mention his wife in it, but there is a tradition that she was present in the laboratory when the phenomenon of the twitching of the frog's legs was first noticed, and indeed that it was she who called his attention to the curious occurrence.

She was a woman of well-developed intellect, and her association with her father and also with her husband made her well acquainted with the anatomy and physiology of the day. She realized that what had occurred was quite out of the ordinary. She is even said to have suggested their possible connection with the presence and action of the electric apparatus. Husband and wife, then, together, by means of a series of observations determined that, whenever the apparatus was not in use the phenomenon of the convulsive movements of the frog's legs did not take place, notwithstanding irritation by the scalpel. Whenever the electric apparatus was working, however, then the phenomenon in question always took place. According to either form of the story, if we accept the traditions in the matter, Madame Galvani had an important part in the discovery.

Galvani's most important contribution to science is undoubtedly his De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius—Commentary on the Forces of Electricity in Their Relation to Muscular Motion. Like many another epoch-making contribution to science, it is not a large work, but in his collected works in the edition of 1841, occupies altogether sixty-four pages, of scarcely more than two hundred and fifty words to the page. There are probably not more than fifteen thousand words in it altogether. It was published originally in the eighth volume of the Memoirs of the Institute of Science at Bologna, in 1791, but a reprint of it, with some modifications, was issued at Modena in the following year. This Modenese edition, published by the Societa Typographica, was annotated by Professor Giovanni Aldini, who also wrote an accompanying dissertation, De Animalis Electricae Theoriae Ortu Atque Incrementis, On the Rise and Development of the Theory of Animal Electricity. In this volume was also published a letter from Galvani to Professor Carminati, in Italian, on the Seat of Animal Electricity. These two editions are the sources to which we must turn for whatever Galvani tried to make known with regard to animal electricity.

This little volume consists of four parts: the first of which is devoted to a consideration of the effects of artificial electricity on muscular motion; the second is on the effect of atmospheric electricity on muscular motion; the third is on the effect of animal electricity on muscular motion; and the fourth consists of a series of conjectures and some conclusions from his observations. The arrangement of the work, as can readily be understood from this, is thoroughly scientific. Galvani proceeds from what was best known and most evident to what he knew less about, trying to enlarge the bounds of knowledge and then suggesting the conclusions that might be drawn from his work and offering a number of hints as to the possible significance of many of the phenomena that might form suggestive material for further experimentation along this same line. In spite of the forbiddingness of the Latin to a modern scientist, as a rule, the little work is well worthy of study because of its eminently scientific method and the excellent evidence it affords of the way serious students of science approached a scientific thesis before the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The first paragraph of this dissertation is of such fundamental significance, because it represents the primal work done in animal electricity, that it has seemed to me worth while presenting entire. The original Latin from which the translation is made, and from which a good idea of Galvani's Latin style may be obtained, is given in a note.[12]

"I had dissected a frog and had prepared it, as in Figure 2 of the fifth plate (in which is shown a nerve muscle preparation), and had placed it upon a table on which there was an electric machine, while I set about doing certain other things. The frog was entirely separated from the conductor of the machine, and indeed was at no small distance away from it. While one of those who were assisting me touched lightly and by chance the point of his scalpel to the internal crural nerves of the frog, suddenly all the muscles of its limbs were seen to be so contracted that they seemed to have fallen into tonic convulsions. Another of my assistants, who was making ready to take up certain experiments in electricity with me, seemed to notice that this happened only at the moment when a spark came from the conductor of the machine. He was struck with the novelty of the phenomenon, and immediately spoke to me about it, for I was at the moment occupied with other things and mentally preoccupied. I was at once tempted to repeat the experiment, so as to make clear whatever might be obscure in it. For this purpose I took up the scalpel and moved its point close to one or the other of the crural nerves of the frog, while at the same time one of my assistants elicited sparks from the electric machine. The phenomenon happened exactly as before. Strong contractions took place in every muscle of the limb, and at the very moment when the sparks appeared, the animal was seized as it were with tetanus."

Galvani then explains in detail how he made observations on control frogs at moments when there were no electric sparks, and decided that the contact with the scalpel was only effective in producing twitchings when there was a simultaneous electric spark. He noted, also, that occasionally the contractions did not occur, in spite of the fulfilment of the conditions mentioned. He traced this to fatigue. He then proceeded to vary the experiment in many ways, decreasing the size of the scalpel, increasing and decreasing the size of the electric machine and varying the method of preparation of the frog, so as to decide just what the significance of the phenomenon was. In a general way, it may be said that this study shows Galvani as one of the most careful of experimentalists, though he has often been declared to be a theorizer, rather than an observer.

A very interesting anticipation of Galvani's original experiment, made long before his time by a great naturalist, the story of which serves to show that discoveries made before their time, that is, before people are ready to follow them up, fail to attract attention, has been called to my attention by Brother Potamian. In the second volume of the Dutch Naturalist Swammerdam's Works, page 839, is to be found the following passage:[13] "Another experiment that is at once very curious and suggestive can be made if one separates the largest of the muscles of the thigh of the frog and so prepares it with its adherent nerve as to leave it unhurt. If after this has been done you take the tendons of this muscle, one in each hand, and irritate the hanging nerve by a little forceps or other instrument, the muscle will recover the former motion which it had lost. You will see at once that it contracts and that there will be an effort as it were to bring together the two hands which hold its tendons. This I demonstrated, in the year 1658, to the illustrious Duke of Tuscany then reigning, when he was at the moment in a state of mind that prompted him not to favor me. This same experiment can be repeated with the same muscle as often and for as long a time as any portion of the nerve remains uninjured, so that we may, therefore, irritate the muscle to its former contraction as often as we wish."

As a foundation classic in electricity, Galvani's De Viribus Electricitatis deserves more detailed analysis. The first part of the monograph is taken up with experiments of many kinds, with what may be called artificial sources of electricity—the electric machine, the Leyden jar, and other modes of electrical development. The second part treats of the effects of atmospheric electricity upon muscular motion, by which expression Galvani means lightning, though he also observed various electrical manifestations in the muscles of his frogs when there was no actual lightning but only darkening of the heavens, without actual passage of the current flash from one cloud to another or from the clouds to the earth. In this matter, Galvani displayed quite as much courage as patient observation. He knew the fate of Richmann, the Russian scientist, who had been struck dead by a lightning-bolt while making experiments not very different, yet he dared to place a lightning conductor on the highest point of his house, and to this conductor he attached a wire, which ran down to his laboratory. During a storm, he suspended on this metallic circuit, by means of their sciatic nerves, frogs' legs and the legs of other animals prepared for the purpose. To the feet of the animals he attached another Wire sufficiently long to reach down to the bottom of a well, thus grounding the circuit.

Not satisfied with this study of the influence of lightning and large electrical disturbances in the air on the preparation of the frog as he had made it, Galvani set about discovering whether even the slight differences in electrical potential which occur during the day in atmospheric electricity might not give rise, even in fair weather, to certain contractions of the frog's muscles. He made his observations for many days at many different hours and under varying conditions of light and shade, of heat and cold, without finding anything. There were occasional contractions, but they bore no definite relation to variations in the atmosphere, or the electric state of the atmosphere. Galvani satisfied himself of this very thoroughly, and with a patience and diligence worthy of emulation by a Fellow at a modern university working on a foundation for the determination of a particular question.

The third part of the work is the most important as well as the longest, and contains the ideas which are original with Galvani, but which met most opposition in his time and have only been properly appreciated in recent years. Galvani came to the conclusion that there is such a thing as animal electricity. This led to a famous controversy with Volta, in which their contemporaries judged that Galvani had the worst of it; but, as so often happens, their successors a century later would judge that Galvani's views were more in accord with what we know at the present time. Criticism is always easier than scientific advance, and in a controversy it is usually the man who writes most forcibly, rather than the one who thinks most deeply, who secures the assent of readers. This makes controversy in matters of science always unfortunate, for it does much more to retard than to help scientific progress.

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.

A very interesting phase of the Italian University life of that time is revealed in two important incidents of Galvani's university career. One of his professors—one, by the way, for whom he seems to have had a great deal of respect, and to whose lectures he devoted much attention, was Laura Caterina Maria Bassi, the distinguished woman Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bologna, about the middle of the eighteenth century. It is doubtless to her teaching that Galvani owes some of his thorough-going conservatism in philosophic speculation, a conservatism that was of great service to him later on in life, in the midst of the ultra-radical principles which became fashionable just before and during the French Revolution. Madame Bassi seems to have had her influence on him for good not only during his student career, but also later in life, for she was the wife of a prominent physician in Bologna, and Galvani was often in social contact with her during her years of connection with the University.

As might, perhaps, be expected, seeing that his own happy domestic life showed him that an educated woman might be the center of intellectual influence, Galvani seems to have had no spirit of opposition to even the highest education for women. This is very well illustrated by the first formal lecture in his course on anatomy at the University, which had for its subject the models for the teaching of anatomy that had been made by Madame Manzolini.[17] In the early part of the eighteenth century, Madame Manzolini had been the Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bologna, and in order to make the teaching of this difficult subject easier and more definite, she modeled with great care and delicate attention to every detail, so that they imitated actual dissections of the human body very closely, a set of wax figures, which replaced the human body for demonstration purposes, at least at the beginning of the anatomical course.

Galvani, in taking up the work of lecturer in anatomy, appreciated how much such a set of models would serve to make the introduction to anatomical study easy, yet at the same time without diminishing its exactness, and accordingly introduced his students to Madame Manzolini's set of models in his very first lecture. At the time, not a few of the teachers of anatomy at the Italian universities were inclined to consider the use of these models as rather an effeminate proceeding. Galvani's lack of prejudice in the matter shows the readiness of the man to accept the best, wherever he found it, without regard to persons or feelings.

Galvani's personal character was very pleasant, yet rather grave and serious. His panegyrist, Professor Giuseppe Venturoli, in the eulogium of Galvani, delivered in the Public Academy of the Institute of Bologna (1802) within five years after Galvani's death, says that Galvani was far from that coldness or lack of interest which sometimes characterizes scientists in their social relations, and which, as he naÏvely says, is sometimes praised and sometimes blamed by those who write about them. Another side of Galvani's character is more interesting. He was ready to do all in his power for the poor. He conducted his obstetrical clinic particularly with a liberal benevolence and charity that deserve to be mentioned. When it is considered how much time his teaching and his charity took from him, it is rather surprising to find that he had enough left to enable him to devote himself with so much success to the difficult tasks he set himself in research and to the time-taking labors of controversy, which occupied many years after the announcement of his discoveries.

The most striking proof of the thorough conscientiousness with which he faced the duties of life is to be found in his conduct after the establishment of the so-called Cis-Alpine Republic in Italy. This was a government established merely by force of arms, maintained through French influence, without the consent of the people, and a plain usurpation of the rights of the previous government. Galvani considered himself bound in duty to the authority under which he had lived all his previous life and to which he had sworn fealty. When the University of Bologna was reorganized under the new government, the first requirement of all those who were made professors was that they should take the oath of allegiance to the new government. This he refused to do. His motives can be readily understood, and though practically all the other professors of the University had taken the oath, he did not consider that this freed him from his conscientious obligations in the matter.

Accordingly he was dropped from the roll of professors and deprived of the never very large salary which he had obtained from this chair. On this sum he had practically depended for his existence, and he began to suffer from want. While he had been a successful practitioner of medicine, especially of surgery, he had always been very liberal, and had spent large sums of money in demonstrations for his lectures and personal experimentation and in materials for the museums of the University. He began to suffer from actual want, and friends had to come to his assistance. He refused, however, to give up his scruples in the matter and accept the professorship which was still open to him. Finally, at the end of two years, influence was brought to bear on the new government, and Galvani was allowed to accept his chair in the University without taking the oath of allegiance. This tribute came too late, however, and within a short time after his restoration to his professorship he died.

Galvani's conduct in this affair is the key-note to his character and conduct through life. For him duty was the paramount word, and success meant the accomplishment of duty. For getting on in the world and material rewards he had no use unless they came as the consequence of duty fulfilled. His action in the matter of the University professorship has of course been much discussed by his biographers.

His eulogist, Professor Venturoli, whom we have already quoted, and whose eulogium is to be found in the complete edition of Galvani's works issued at Bologna in 1841,[18] has much to say with regard to Galvani's religious sentiments.

He says: "The great founder in electricity was deeply religious, and his piety clothed a heart that was not less affectionate and sensitive to affection than it was intrepid and courageous. When called upon to take the civic oath in a formula involved in ambiguous words, he did not believe that he ought, on so serious an occasion, to permit himself anything but the clear and precise expression of his sentiments, full as they were of honesty and rectitude. Refusing to take advantage of the suggestion that he should modify the oath by some declaration apart from the prescribed formula, though it might still be generally understood that he had taken the oath, he refused constantly to commit himself to any such subterfuge. It is not our duty here to ask whether his conclusion was correct or not. He followed the voice of his conscience, which ever must be the standard of duty, and it certainly would have been a fault to have deviated from it. It is sad to think that this great man, deprived of his position, saw himself, for an instant at least, exposed to the danger of ending his career, deprived of the recompense which he so richly deserved and to which his past services to the State and the University had given him so just a title. This is all the more sad when we realize that the vicissitudes of his delicate health, much more than his age, now rendered such recompense doubly necessary. It is a gracious thing to recall, however, the noble firmness with which he maintained himself against so serious a blow. His courage is all the more admirable as one can see how absolutely without affectation it is. He was not ostentatious in his goodness, and did not permit himself to be cast down by the unfortunate conditions, but constantly preserved in the midst of adverse fortune that modest, imperturbable and dignified conduct which had always characterized him in the midst of his prosperity and his glory."

That his action in this matter was very properly appreciated by his contemporaries, and that the moral influence of his example was not lost, can be realized from the expressions used by Alibert, the Secretary-General of the Medical Society of Emulation, in the historical address on Galvani which he delivered before that society in Paris in 1801:

"Galvani constantly refused to take the civil oath demanded by the decrees of the Cis-Alpine Republic. Who can blame him for having followed the voice of his conscience—that sacred, interior voice which alone prescribes the duties of man and which has preceded all human laws? Who could not praise him for having sacrificed all such exemplary resignation, all the emoluments of his professorship, rather than violate the solemn engagements made under religious sanction?"

In the same panegyric there is a very curiously interesting passage with regard to Galvani's habit of frequently closing his lectures by calling attention to the complexity yet the purposefulness of natural things, and the inevitable conclusion that they must have been created with a definite purpose by a Supreme Being possessed of intelligence. At the time that Alibert wrote his memoir, it was the fashion to consider, at least in France, that Christianity was a thing of the past, and that while theism might remain, that would be all that could be expected to survive the crumbling effect of the emancipation of man.

He says: "We have seen already what was Galvani's zeal and his love for the religion which he professed. We may add that, in his public demonstrations, he never finished his lectures without exhorting his pupils to a renewal of their faith, by leading them always back to the idea of the eternal Providence which develops, preserves and causes life to flow among so many different kinds of things. I write now," he continues, "in the age of reason, of tolerance and of light. Must I then defend Galvani in the eyes of posterity for one of the most beautiful sentiments that can spring from the nature of man? No; and they are but little initiated in the saner mechanism of philosophy who refuse to recognize the truths established on evidence so strong and so authentic. Breves haustus in philosophia ad atheismum ducunt, longiores autem reducunt ad Deum—Small draughts of philosophy lead to atheism, but longer draughts bring one back to God"—(which may be better translated, perhaps, for English readers by Pope's well known lines, "A little learning [in philosophy] is a dangerous thing; drink deep or touch not the Pierian spring").

Galvani has been honored by his fellow-citizens of Bologna as one of their greatest townsmen, and by the University as one of her worthiest sons. In 1804, a medal was struck in his honor, on the reverse of which, surrounding a figure of the genius of science, were the two legends: "Mors mihi vita," "Death is life for me," and "Spiritus intus alit," "The spirit works within," which were favorite expressions of the great scientist while living, and are lively symbols of the spirit which animated him. In 1814, a monument was erected to him in the courtyard of the University of Bologna. It is surmounted by his bust, made by the most distinguished Bolognian sculptor of the time, De Maria. On the pedestal there are two figures in bas-relief, executed by the same sculptor, which represent religion and philosophy, the inspiring genius of Galvani's life.

Before he died, he asked, as had his favorite poet Dante, whose Divina Commedia had been one of the pleasures of life and above all one of the consolations of his times of adversity, to be buried in the humble habit of a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. He is said to have valued his fellowship with the sons of the "poor little man of Assisi" more than the many honorary fellowships of various kinds which had been conferred upon him by scientific societies all over Europe. With him passed away one of the great pioneers of modern science and one of the most lovable men in all the history of science. His death took place just before the close of the eighteen century, Dec. 4, 1798, but his work was destined to be one of the harbingers of a great period of electrical development.

[11] Fordham University Press, 1906.