Luigi Galvani lived and practiced medicine in Bologna, Italy.  Bologna's famed medical school was renowned for the excellence of its anatomical program.  While Galvani was a student there, pioneering physiologists were conducting research into the role of electricity in muscular contractions:  Is there such a thing as "animal" electricity?  Are nerves conduits for electrical fluid through the body?  What keeps the electrical fluid confined within the nerves?  Is electricity the long-sought-after stuff of life?

It's not clear exactly when Galvani began his own investigations on animal electricity, but by 1780, he had gathered all the necessary materials and equipment:  machines to generate electrical charge, Leyden jars to store the electrical fluid, and frogs.

In January 1781, while a laboratory assistant examined a dissected frog, another assistant was generating electricity using a machine located some distance away.  Just as the dissector touched the frog's femoral nerve with a scalpel, a spark happened to discharge from the electrical machine.  At that instant a noticeable contraction occurred in the frog's leg muscle. 

Galvani found that, by recreating the conditions that preceded the "accidental" contraction, he could reproduce it at will.  Further investigation confirmed that the muscle twitches were coincident with a spark discharge; that a long wire attached to a hook inserted in the frog's spinal cord could substitute for a person holding the scalpel; and that even in the absence of an electric spark, a frog placed on a metal plate would exhibit muscle contractions if the metal hook in its spinal cord was brought into contact with the metal plate.

Galvani believed he had shown that electricity is a fluid inherent in animal matter, and called it nerveo-electric fluid.  He theorized that it is produced in the cerebrum and conducted by nerves to the muscles where it could be held in readiness for use.  He envisioned each muscle fiber as a tiny Leyden jar with its inside positively charged and its outside negatively charged.  Nerves, he claimed, are like wax-coated wires.  Contractions can result whenever a nerve is stimulated by the mind, or by mechanical irritation. 

When Galvani published his results in 1791, the news inspired medical practitioners as well as physical scientists to explore the ways in which artificial electricity could be used to treat disease, resuscitate individuals who had suffered drowning or suffocation, relieve victims of melancholy and restore the use of paralyzed limbs.

It was an unfortunate turn of events for the frogs of Europe because scientists and physicians of all types wanted to see Galvani's effect for themselves.

Letter 1

I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man....

[Y]ou cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation....

Letter 2

There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.  I am practically industrious--painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour--but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men....

Letter 3

But success shall crown my endeavours.  Wherefore not?...  What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?

Victor Frankenstein:

I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa....  A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father....

Cornelius Agrippa (1486 - 1535)

"Ah! Cornelius Agrippa!  My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash."

...I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life....  Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death?...

When I was about fifteen years old ... we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm....

Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity.  On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me....

Professor Waldman (on modern chemistry):

...these [modern] philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles.

They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places.  They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe.  They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers....
 

Victor Frankenstein:

...soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose.  So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein--more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

Victor Frankenstein:

Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?...

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death....

I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplifed in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me--a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret....

After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture....

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow....

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds which I should ... break through.

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.  No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs....

	Frontispiece illustration to 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein:

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.  With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs....

Victor Frankenstein:

Farewell Walton!  Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.