which such apparently fantastic hopes have played in connexion with the
entry of electricity into human civilization. (Nor are such hopes
confined to the eighteenth century; as we shall see, the same impulse
urged Crookes a hundred years later to that decisive discovery which
was to usher in the latest phase in the history of science, a phase in
which the investigating human spirit has been led to that boundary of
the physical-material world where the transition takes place from inert
matter into freely working energy.)

If there was any doubt left as to whether in nature the same power was
at work which, in animal and man, was hidden away within the soul, this
doubt seemed finally to have been dispelled through Galvani's discovery
that animal limbs could be made to move electrically through being
touched by two bits of different metals. No wonder that 'the storm
which was loosed in the world of the physicists, the physiologists and
the doctors through Galvani's publication can only be compared with the
one crossing the political horizon of Europe at the same time. Wherever
there happened to be frogs and two pieces of different metals
available, everyone sought proof with his own eyes that the severed
limbs could be marvellously re-enlivened.'1

Like many of his contemporaries, Galvani was drawn by the fascinating
behaviour of the new force of nature to carry on electrical experiments
as a hobby alongside his professional work, anatomical research. For
his experiments he used the room where his anatomical specimens were
set out. So it happened that his electrical machine stood near some
frogs' legs, prepared for dissection. By a further coincidence his
assistant, while playing with the machine, released a few sparks just
when some of the specimens were in such contact with the surface
beneath them that they were bound to react to the sudden alteration of