The Embryo at the Wound 63
Galvani experimented for years with nerves from frogs' legs, con-
nected in various circuits with several kinds of metals. He grew con-
vinced that the vital spirit was electricity flowing through the nerves and
announced this to the Bologna Academy of Science in 1791.
Within two years, Alesandro Volta, a physicist at the University of
Padua, had proven that Galvani had in fact discovered a new kind of
electricity, a steady current rather than sparks. He'd generated a bi-
metallic direct current, a flow of electrons between two metals, such as
the copper hooks and iron railing of the famous balcony observation,
connected by a conducting medium—in other words, a battery. The
frogs' legs, being more or less bags of weak salt solution, were the elec-
trolyte, or conducting medium. They were otherwise incidental, Volta
explained, and there was no such thing as Galvani's "animal electricity."
Galvani, a shy and thoroughly noncombative soul, was crushed. His
only response was an anonymous paper in 1794 describing several exper-
iments in which frogs' legs could be made to twitch with no metal in
the circuit. In one procedure, the experimenter touched one leg nerve
with the frog's dissected-out, naked spinal cord, while holding the other
leg to complete the circuit. Here the current was true animal electricity,
coming from the amputation wound at the base of the leg.