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So, also, do the ideas of Galvani and the experiments and conclusions of all except Franklin, until we come to Faraday. They knew nothing of this last. Vail discovered and used it before the line was finished. The two wires, insulated, were inclosed in a pipe, lead presumably, and the pipe was placed in the ground.
Wherever there happened to be frogs and two pieces of different metals available, everyone sought proof with his own eyes that the severed limbs could be marvellously re-enlivened.'1 Like many of his contemporaries, Galvani was drawn by the fascinating behaviour of the new force of nature to carry on electrical experiments as a hobby alongside his professional work, anatomical research.
An account of them is given in his Beiträge zur Optik,6 published in 1791, the year in which Galvani came before the public with his observations in the sphere of electricity.
Then came Volta with his famous "electric pile" and Galvani and Day and the Danish professor Hans Christian Oersted and Ampere and Arago and Faraday, all of them diligent searchers after the true nature of the electric forces. He intended to use copper wire and a little machine which he had invented. People laughed at him.
This new application of the sense of taste deserves further investigation, as it may acquaint us with new properties of matter. From the experiments above mentioned of Galvani, Volta, Fowler, and others, it appears, that a plate of zinc and a plate of silver have greater effect than lead and silver.
At last, however, it became necessary seriously to attend to the purpose of my journey. Only in passing did I touch at Wurzburg for a day. I remember nothing of the meeting with my relations and acquaintance beyond the melancholy visit to Friederike Galvani already mentioned.
Galvani, the pioneer of electrical science, was scoffed at by his learned colleagues, and called the “frogs’ dancing master.” Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, was ridiculed and persecuted by his professional brethren on account of his heresy and driven from his lecture chair.
And even then the science of electricity remained a mere little group of curious facts for nearly two hundred years, connected perhaps with magnetism a mere guess that perhaps with the lightning. Frogs' legs must have hung by copper hooks from iron railings and twitched upon countless occasions before Galvani saw them.
Galvani was laughed at and called the frogs' dancing-master; Auenbrugger was made fun of for drumming on people; Harvey is said to have lost half of his consulting practice; all because they were advancing ideas that their contemporaries were not ready to accept.
We owe to it the famous experiment of Galvani that led Volta to the discovery of the pile and what followed it, the astonishing conquests of electricity and those more marvelous ones still that are now in their dawn. Science is much indebted to the frog, and may the homage that we pay him help to alleviate the sufferings that have been imposed upon this brave animal!
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