Marco Bresadola

Animal Electricity at the End of the Eighteenth Century: The Many Facets of a Great Scientific Controversy

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 Galvanis and Voltas research, and with reference to the context of science and society of the eighteenth century.

At Play with Nature: Luigi Galvani’s Experimental Approach to Muscular Physiology

Italian scholars seem to share the growing interest of historians of science in research notebooks. A recent sign of this trend, which in Italy has important precedents, especially in the work of Luigi Belloni, is the publication of Lazzaro Spallanzani’s diaries of experiments and observations, and Maria Teresa Monti’s study of them. Another Italian man of science, who left a conspicuous laboratory register, is Luigi Galvani, whose work – to use the words of Bernard Cohen – “opened up a new field of research and stimulated able minds to produce a kind of revolution within science.” Here Cohen is clearly referring to Galvani’s investigation into animal electricity, which “opened up” a new field of animal physiology and “stimulated” the study of electrical phenomena, including the work of Alessandro Volta. Most of the records of Galvani’s experimental investigation into animal electricity were published more than fifty years ago, but have not yet received sufficient attention from historians. In my Ph.D. dissertation I devoted many pages to the reconstruction of Galvani’s investigation through his experimental records in the decade which preceded the De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari, the famous treaty of 1791 in which he published his theory of animal electricity. Taking Frederic Holmes’ work on Bernard, Lavoisier and Krebs as my model, I intended to offer a “fine-structure” study of Galvani’s science. This was aimed at the clarification of his experimental practice and at the reconstruction of the route taken by his work on animal electricity, as well as on other subjects such as the “chemistry of life.” My focus here will be more limited. I shall concentrate on Galvani’s experimentation on animal electricity during an early stage of his investigation for two reasons: first, to account for the emergence of Galvani’s experimental approach to this subject, intended as the interplay between the problems, instruments, experiments and interpretations which characterised his laboratory practice; and second, to explore in detail the pathway which led Galvani to one of the earliest outcomes of this approach, his so-called “first experiment.” This experiment, which consisted in the violent contractions of a frog’s limbs when its

A Physician and a Man of Science: Patients, Physicians, and Diseases in Marcello Malpighi's Medical Practice

Marcello Malpighi (1628-94), the celebrated Italian anatomist, was also a very successful physician and, as his correspondence indicates, medical consultant by post. This article focuses on the professional and social network that developed around Malpighis medical activity. The network played a major role in promoting Malpighis professional career and in disseminating his scientific ideas. Malpighis medical practice was indeed fully integrated within his views of the structure and functioning of the human body in health and disease. A fresh look into Malpighis medical practice allows us to get new insights into early modern relations among medicine, the new science, and the identity of physicians.

The Shocking History of Electric Fishes: From Ancient Epochs to the Birth of Neurophysiology by Stanley Finger and Marco Piccolino; and Spark From the Deep: How Shocking Experiments With Strongly Electric Fish Powered Scientific Discovery by William J. Turkel

These two books are similar in several respects. They have the same focus, which is the history of some strange fish and their role in the history of Western science and technology. These fish include the torpedo, an animal commonly found in the Mediterranean and other seas, a catfish that lives in freshwater (including the Nile), a type of eel that inhabits the rivers of South America, and some other fish that produce a shock or some other unpleasant effect when touched directly or indirectly. We now know that this shock is electrical in nature and can amount to 600 or 700 volts, a discharge capable of killing small animals and threatening even a man’s life. Hence, the name “electric fish” given to these animals since the eighteenth century, when the electrical nature of their shock was established. The two books also share a wide chronology, which covers Western history from ancient to modern times (and in one case also prehistory), and one main purpose: to explain the origins and development of electrophysiology, which is the experimental study of the relationship of electricity to life. Indeed, the authors of the two books agree that the study of electric fish played a fundamental role in the birth and modern history of this discipline. However, there are also important differences between the two books, especially in terms of scope and approach. Turkel starts with the encounter between humans and electric fish in prehistory, claiming its relevance for the development of humankind. Indeed, the strange behavior and particular effects of these animals on the human body have attracted man’s attention since ancient times and have made them a favorite subject for symbolic uses, medical applications, and the investigation of the natural world. On the one hand, the study of their electric properties contributed to the discovery of natural forces and processes, including evolution. On the other hand, their experimental manipulation was at the basis of fundamental inventions like the battery, communication and electronic devices. Indeed, Turkel’s main argument is that “our treatment of electric fish as apparatus enabled us to feel our way into electrical worlds of our own and, eventually, to inhabit them” (p. 3). He considers the history of electric fish as representative of “big history,” that is, of the ways in which humankind has learned to live in this world and has acted to change it according to its own needs and wills. Turkel supports the wide scope of his book with extensive and up-to-date references to anthropological, biological, and technological studies, as well as to secondary literature on the history of science. His interpretation of these sources, however, is in some cases controversial. For instance, he sees the early history of electrophysiology and the discovery