This image is released under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Licence
Buy this image as a print
BuyLicense this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library
LicenseArc used by Galvani
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
Arc used by Galvani
Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), an Italian physician and physicist, began his re-searches into electrophysiology in the late 1770s. He noticed that the muscles of a frog twitched and contracted when two different metals, shaped into arcs, were placed on the frog’s spinal cord and leg. He used similar arcs in his fa-mous frog experiments of 1786 where he claimed that the contraction of the muscle was due to ‘animal electricity’. Later disproved, this idea stated that the electrical current was produced by living tissues in the body.
Details
- Category:
- Therapeutics
- Collection:
- Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum Collection
- Object Number:
- A600017
- Materials:
- whole, brass
- Measurements:
-
overall: 8 mm x 278 mm x 923 mm, 0.062 kg
- type:
- metallic arc
- credit:
- Galvani
