The connexion between vital and physical motion : a conversation.

  • Radcliffe, Charles Bland, 1822-1889.
Date:
[1881]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The connexion between vital and physical motion : a conversation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    uncino ferreo earum spinali medulla perforata atque appensa septembris initio (1786) die vesperascente supra parapetto horizontaliter eollocavimus. Uncinus ferream laminam tangebat: en motus in rana spontanei, varii, haud infrequentes. Si digito uncinulum adversus ferream superficiem premeretur, quiescentes excitabantur et toties ferme quoties hujusmodi pressio adhiberetur.”* For some time Galvani was not a little perplexed by what he saw. He saw that there was no reason to refer these contractions to the action of franklinic electricity. He saw that there was almost as little reason for referring them to the action of atmospheric electricity. He could not see, indeed, how electricity could have anything to do with them, for these two kinds of electricity were the only kinds of electricity then known. This he saw and only this, until, towards the close of the evening, it oc- curred to him that the limbs might have an electricity of their own, and that the contractions might be brought about by discharges of this electricity. “Yes, yes,” I can imagine him saying at the time, “ there is an elec- tricity in living animal tissues, over-looked hitherto, which has to play an all-important part in muscular movement. It may be so : it must be so.” At first he had little to say in support of this conclusion : at last he was able to state his case in such a way as to oblige !many to agree with him, among others one who after- wards became greatly celebrated as Alexander von Humboldt, who had even then won for himself the right of speaking authoritatively on the subject by having dealt with it experimentally in the most exact manner, and who, in speaking of Galvani, was quite as ready to use words of praise as the writers of the inscrip- tion on the marble slab, for he writes :—“ le nom * “De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius,” 1791.