Luigi Galvani, born in
1736, was an early physiologist, interested in the relationship between
electricity and the
human body. Galvani's most famous experiment involved electrical stimulation of a
frog's nerves. He discovered that the electrical stimulation caused the
muscle attached to the
nerve to contract, even when both were removed from the frog's body.
The subsequent identification of
electricity as the nerve
stimulus was made not by Galvani, but by
Alessandro Volta. This conclusion was later disproved by
Herman von Helmholtz who measured the speed of
nerve conduction at approximately 90 feet per second, much less than the speed expected if nerve conduction were indeed a simple electrical
process.
The
surname Galvani provides the word stem for
galvanism and such items as the
galvanic cell,
galvanised iron, and the
galvanometer.
Galvani died in
1798.