Abstract
In an issue of the proceedings of the Bologna Academy and Institute of Sciences and Arts dated 27 March 1791, Luigi Galvani published an article that was to be a milestone in the world of physics and physiology. He began this paper, which was entitled De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari Commentarius, with the following description:
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I dissected and prepared a frog and placed it on a table, on which was an electrical machine, widely removed from its conductor and separated by no brief interval. When by chance one of those who were assisting me gently touched the point of a scalpel to the medial crural nerves of this frog, immediately all the muscle of the limbs seemed to be so contracted that they appeared to have fallen into violent tonic convulsions. But another of the assistants, who was on hand when I did electrical experiments, seemed to observe that the same thing occurred whenever a spark was discharged from the conductor of the machine.
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Partridge, L.D., Partridge, L.D. (2003). Measurement of Neural Function. In: Nervous System Actions and Interactions. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0425-2_10
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