Book of the month: Eusebio Valli’s Experiments on Animal Electricity
In the late 18th century, the Italian physicist, Luigi Galvani, caused a considerable and controversial stir among the scientific community with his experiments in the newly discovered field of medical electricity. Using the legs of dead frogs, Galvani demonstrated that the application of various metals to a muscle or its respective nerve could cause the leg to twitch.
These sensational experiments, which suggested life being restored to the dead, inspired a large number of other scientists, especially in Italy, to pursue similar research. One of the most enthusiastic of Galvani's disciples was Eusebio Valli, a young physician, born in Pisa in 1755. Valli travelled throughout Europe giving public displays of the Galvanian experiments and becoming the first to publish papers on the subject of "animal electricity".
In 1793, Valli summed up all his studies in Galvanism in a 300 page volume entitled Experiments on Animal Electricity, which he had published in London in English. This was the most complete work on the subject at the time and was later translated into various European languages. It was to remain an influential book for many years.
Continuing experimentation on animal electricity extended to its use on human corpses and was fundamental to the development of the science of neurophysiology. It was also to be the inspiration for Mary Shelley's gothic fantasy novel, Frankenstein, which was published in 1818 and dealt with the creation of life in a man-made monster through the use of electricity and was intended a cautionary tale of the misuse of Promethean power.
Valli later became interested in vaccination as a means of protecting humanity from the ravages of plague. He carried out numerous trials using himself as a subject. This was to lead to his own premature death in Cuba in 1816.
Robert Mills, RCPI Librarian