Josh Mark F.

Villapando

Gr. 12 STEM – A (GEN PHYSICS 2)

Luigi Galvani

Luigi Galvani - an Italian physician, physicist, biologist and philosopher, who studied animal electricity. In
1780, he discovered that the muscles of dead frogs' legs twitched when struck by an electrical spark. This
was an early study of bioelectricity, following experiments by John Walsh and Hugh Williamson.

Galvani then began taking an interest in the field of "medical electricity". This field emerged in the middle of
the 18th century, following electrical researches and the discovery of the effects of electricity on the human
body by scientists including Bertrand Bajon and Ramón M. Termeyer in the 1760s, and by John Walsh and
Hugh Williamson in the 1770s.

Despite the gain in knowledge of electrical properties and the building of generators, it was not until the late
18th century that Italian physician and anatomist Luigi Galvani marked the birth of electrochemistry by
establishing a bridge between muscular contractions and electricity with his 1791 essay De Viribus
Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius (Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular
Motion), where he proposed a "nerveo-electrical substance" in life forms.

Galvani not only laid the foundations of a new science, electrophysiology, but also opened the way for the
invention of the electric battery, and thus for the development of the physical investigations of electricity