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Copyright of Mersin University School of Medicine Lokman Hekim Journal of History of Medicine & Folk Medicine is the property of Mersin University School of Medicine and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As pesquisas elétricas de Luigi Galvani, que culminaram com a formulação da teoria da eletricidade animal e, posteriormente, suscitaram uma das mais emblemáticas controvérsias na história da ciência com Alessandro Volta, evidenciam uma profícua relação entre hipóteses e experimentações. Este artigo busca contextualizar os estudos iniciais de Galvani fazendo vínculos de suas experimentações com a ideia baconiana de experientia literata e, sobretudo, com a concepção de experimentação exploratória na perspectiva de Friedrich Steinle. Ao final, apresenta algumas implicações desse resgate histórico-filosófico para um ensino sobre a ciência.

The early development of nerve conduction studies (NCS) and electromyography (EMG) was linked to the discovery of electricity. This relationship had been concluded by observing the effect of applying electricity to the body of an animal and discovering that nerves and muscles themselves could produce electricity. We attempt to review the historical evolution of NCS and EMG over the last three centuries by reviewing the landmark publications of Galvani, Adrian, Denny-Brown, Larrabee, and Lambert. In 1771, Galvani showed that electrical stimulation of animal muscle tissue produced contraction and, thereby, the concept of animal electricity was born. In 1929, Adrian devised a method to record a single motor unit potential by connecting concentric needle electrodes to an amplifier and a loud speaker. In 1938, Denny-Brown described the fasciculation potentials and separated them from fibrillations. Toward the end of World War II, Larrabee began measuring the compound muscle action potential in healthy and injured nerves of war victims. In 1957, Lambert and Eaton described the electrophysiologic features of a new myasthenic syndrome associated with lung carcinoma. Overall, research on this topic was previously undertaken by neurophysiologists and then later by neurologists, with Adrian most likely being the first neurologist to be involved. The field greatly benefited from the invention of equipment that was capable of amplifying small bioelectrical currents by the beginning of the 20th century. Significant scientific and technical advances were later made during and after World War II which provided a large patient population with nerve injuries to study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After extensive experimentation during the 1790s, Alexander von Humboldt remained skeptical about “animal electricity” (and metallic electricity), writing instead about an ill-defined galvanic force. With his worldview and wishing to learn more, he studied electric eels in South America just as the new century began, again using his body as a scientific instrument in many of his experiments. As had been the case in the past and for many of the same reasons, some of his findings with the electric eel (and soon after, Italian torpedoes) seemed to argue against biological electricity. But he no longer used galvanic terminology when describing his electric fish experiments. The fact that he now wrote about animal electricity rather than a different “galvanic” force owed much to Alessandro Volta, who had come forth with his “pile” (battery) for multipling the physical and perceptable effects of otherwise weak electricity in 1800, while Humboldt was deep in South America. Humboldt probably read about and saw voltaic batteries in the United States in 1804, but the time he spent with Volta in 1805 was probably more significant in his conversion from a galvanic to an electrical framework for understanding nerve and muscle physiology. Although he did not continue his animal electricity research program after this time, Humboldt retained his worldview of a unified nature and continued to believe in intrinsic animal electricity. He also served as a patron to some of the most important figures in the new field of electrophysiology (e.g., Hermann Helmholtz and Emil du Bois-Reymond), helping to take the research that he had participated in to the next level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the 1790s, Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), who showed an early interest in many facets of natural philosophy and natural history, delved into the controversial subject of galvanism and animal electricity, hoping to shed light on the basic nature of the nerve force. He was motivated by his broad worldview, the experiments of Luigi Galvani, who favored animal electricity in more than a few specialized fishes, and the thinking of Alessandro Volta, who accepted specialized fish electricity but was not willing to generalize to other animals, thinking Galvani's frog experiments flawed by his use of metals. Differing from many German Naturphilosophen, who shunned “violent” experiments, the newest instruments, and detailed measurement, Humboldt conducted thousands of galvanic experiments on animals and animal parts, as well as many on his own body, some of which caused him great pain. He interpreted his results as supporting some but not all of the claims made by both Galvani and Volta. Notably, because of certain negative findings and phenomenological differences, he remained skeptical about the intrinsic animal force being qualitatively identical to true electricity. Hence, he referred to a “galvanic force,” not animal electricity, in his letters and publications, a theoretical position he would abandon with Volta's help early in the new century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We provide a guide to Bologna, Italy, focusing particularly on sites of interest to physicists. Our first tour is in the city center; it begins in the Piazza Maggiore at the Palazzo d'Accursio, the Basilica di San Petronio, and the Archiginnasio (Old University) and then proceeds to the Two Towers and the Palazzo Poggi, which houses the Astronomical Observatory Museum and other important instrument and art collections; it concludes at the Physics Museum, Department of Physics and Astronomy. Our second tour again begins in the Piazza Maggiore but goes to sites beyond the city center where famous Bolognese physicists and other scientists were born, lived, and are buried. Finally, we point out important museums and other institutions on the outskirts of Bologna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific endeavor that led Luigi Galvani to his hypothesis of “animal electricity,” i.e., of an electricity present in a condition of disequilibrium between the interior and the exterior of excitable animal fibers, is reviewed here with particular emphasis to the role played by visual images in Galvani's path of discovery. In 1791 Galvani formulated his model of neuromuscular physiology on the base of the image of a muscle and a nerve fiber together as in a “minute animal Leyden jar.” This was the last instance of a series of physical models that accompanied Galvani's experimental efforts in the search of a theory capable of accounting for the electric nature of nerve conduction in spite of the many objections formulated in the eighteenth century against a possible role of electricity in animal physiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1790s, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta were the main protagonists of a lively debate on the role of electricity in animal organisms. Significant developments originated from this debate, leading to the foundation of two new disciplines, electrodynamics and electrophysiology, that were to play a crucial role in the scientific and technological progress of the last two centuries. The Galvani-Volta controversy has been repeatedly reconstructed, sometimes in an attempt to identify the merits and the errors of one or the other of the two protagonists, sometimes with the aim of demonstrating that the theories elaborated by the two Italian scholars were irreconcilable, reflecting completely different ways of looking at phenomena and conceiving of scientific research. In this article a different interpretation is offered, based on a discussion of the scientific issues that were central to Galvani's and Volta's research, and with reference to the context of science and society of the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In spite of the historical importance of the research that, in the second half of the 18th century, led Luigi Galvani (1737–1798) to lay down the foundation of modern electrophysiology, his scientific personality is largely misrepresented in science history and in popular imagery. He is still considered as a pioneer that by chance incurred some surprising experimental observations and was incapable of pursuing his research in a coherent way. In contrast with these views, Galvani was a high-standard scientist who succeeded, with the strength of experimental science, in demonstrating, in animals, electricity in a condition of disequilibrium between the interior and the exterior of excitable fibres. This electricity, called ‘animal electricity’, was deemed responsible for nerve conduction. By studying the scientific endeavours of Galvani, through his published and unpublished material, and by situating them in the historical context of the physiology of the Enlightenment, this paper attempts to trace the elusive and complex path that led Galvani to his extraordinary discovery. To cite this article: M. Piccolino, C. R. Biologies 329 (2006). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Indicative of the fascinating unpredictability of scientific progress, the discovery path that in the last two centuries has brought about some fundamental developments in electrical science, was closely connected to studies leading to the demonstration of the physiological role of electricity in animal tissues. Both depended in an important way on the demonstration of the electrical nature of the shock of the torpedo fish provided by the English ‘natural philosopher’ John Walsh in the summer season of 1772. Until Walsh's time the painful shock produced by the torpedo and similar fish was considered to be the effect of a mechanical agency. This article briefly outlines some interesting aspects of the research path whereby the ‘mechanical’ torpedo turned out to be electrical in nature. It tries, moreover, to establish an ideal link that could relate the curious property of this singular fish with a major recent advance in the field of audiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, better known as Mary Shelley, and her romantic vision of the world gave life to an endless progeny of literacy stories; also originated the myth of the mortal creator who generate life from science. Unexpectedly the history has been considered as a myth, due to acts grounded in facts of certain “truthful;” such were galvanism and the study of the electrical potential in living beings by the two Italian physicians: Luigi Galvani and Giovanni Aldini. Also, is possible to proclaim direct influence on the work by the European folklore surrounding the theologian, alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel and physician who habited the Frankenstein’s Castle from his birth, and further developing the “life elixir.” The similarities between the novel and the life of the three historical figures suggests that Mary Shelley, belonging to a socially graceful and educated class, was aware of the scientific dispute over the understanding of electricity. Shelley’s creative world, full of gothic and romantic hues, shows direct influence of alchemy speaking of the “spark of life” as well as works published by Galvani and Aldini., (Copyright: © 2018 SecretarÍa de Salud.)

The story of Victor Frankenstein's quest to conquer death produced a legacy that has endured for almost 200 years. Powerful in its condemnation of the scientist's quest to achieve knowledge at any cost, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the most enduring novels of all time. It has never been out of print and has been translated to both stage and screen many times since its "birth." Numerous novels, short stories, and scripts have drawn upon Shelley's primary theme: the creation of a living organism from the dead, dying, and decaying body parts of human beings. Although Mary does not provide details of the animation process, particularly in her first edition, the process has been explored with a great deal of imagination and originality in the various cinematic portrayals of the story. Equally important as the theme of the scientist's quest for knowledge is the role that a creator plays in the life of its creation. Mary Shelley's novel pondered on how rejection would affect the offspring of such "unnatural" origins. In keeping with the "scientific" basis of the Creature's birth, cinematic portrayals attempted to provide a scientific rationale for the Creature's descent into madness and its evil behavior. From Robert Florey's initial script for the 1931 film directed by James Whale to the more recent films and television series, an abnormal brain is considered to be the cause of the madness and malignity of the Creature., (© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)