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Luigi Galvani

 
Bologna 09.October.1737-Bologna 04.December.1798
 
 
The life and the works
by Mark Bresadola and Paul Fezzi - University of Bologna
 
         
  
1737 The 9 September Luigi Galvani is born to Bologna, first son of Domenico Galvani, a Gloomy goldsmith, and Caterina Barbarian. After the first studies of grammar and “literature”, Luigi is enrolled to the University, where it attends the philosophy course at first in order then to address towards the medicine and the scientific matters. At the same time it attends the Institute of Sciences of Bologna, one of the main scientific institutions of the age, where it follows the physical course, chemistry and natural history.
 
1759 Galvani takes to the bachelor in philosophy and medicine and undertakes the first steps in order to approach the academic career. In 1761 it becomes “pupil” of the Academy of Sciences of Bologna (combined to the Institute of Sciences) and in 1762 it discusses and it publishes the thesis De ossibus (Bologna, 1762), than it is worth the nomination to anatomical and “honorary” reader (that is without wage) in the University. At the same time it starts the medical profession, or like surgeon in the city hospitals that like private doctor.
 
1762 Galvani Lucia spouse, daughter of Domenico Gusmano Galeazzi, that he had been its physical university professor and it was one of the more important exponents of the university and from Bologna the medical and scientific community. Galeazzi becomes main the protecting one of Galvani near the academic and university institutions
 
1766 Thanks also to the participation of Galeazzi, Galvani comes name “Caretaker and ostensore of the anatomical statues” and university professor of practical anatomy in the Institute of Sciences. At the same time it enters to make part of the élite of the Academy of Sciences like “Benedictine member”. In these years it begins to dedicate itself to the anatomical and physiological search, reading to the Academy several dissertations on kidneys and the hearing.
 
1768 Between January and February Galvani it faces the “public function of anatomy”, a cycle of lessons of human anatomy on the corpse, that it came carried out every year during the carnival to the anatomical theater of the University. The happened one obtained in the accomplishment of this assignment guarantees it the nomination to “stipendiario” medicine reader like assistant of Galeazzi.
 
1771 Galvani enters to make part of the Medicine College, the maximum organ of the medicine and from Bologna health, that it presided to the release of the doctor degrees, released the licenses for the exercise of the medicine and controlled the production and the commerce of drugs.
 
1772 Galvani comes name President of the Academy of Sciences of Bologna. On the credit side Academy reads a dissertation on the “halleriana irritability”, that it marks its interest for the issue of the muscular motion.
 
1775 To the dead women of Galeazzi, Galvani happens to it like University professor of practical anatomy, person in charge of the instruction of the human anatomy on the corpse. It continues to take care itself of muscular motion, completing of the studies on the heart and the nerves of the animals.
1780 Al November goes back the first recorded electro physiological experiments in the diary of laboratory of Galvani. In the ten successive years it concentrates itself on the study experiences them of the effects of the electricity in the muscular motion and on chemical-physical surveying of the organism. These searches will carry to the publication of its more famous work, the De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari.
1782 On the credit side Institute of Galvani Sciences not only passes from the instruction of the anatomy to that one of obstetrics, offering of the course practical us to the medicine students, but also to the midwives, that is to the women who in this age took care themselves of the delivery.
 
1791 In the WAYS volume of the Commentarii of the Institute of Sciences of Bologna, dated 1791 but exited effectively only at the beginning of 1792, public Galvani the De viribus. In this treaty its electro physiological experiments are described and come supported the existence of an intrinsic electricity to the man and the animals, from which the muscular motion depends. The “animal electricity” is greeted like a great discovery from the majority of the commentators and immediately provokes great attention in the scientific atmosphere of the age.
 
1792 Alexander Volta, one of first and more interested readers of the De viribus, publishes the first result of its experiments on the animal electricity, in which he puts in argument some of the conclusions to which arrived era Galvani. Between the two a comparison is born at a distance, than it becomes rich of many other protagonists and that it generates one of the most meaningful scientific controversies of modern science.
 
1794 Public Galvani, in anonymous form, the treaty Of the use and the activity of the arc conductor in the contractions of the muscles, in which retort to the objections the moves from Time, for which the galvaniani phenomena have had to an extrinsic electricity to the organism, and it describes one of the experiments happens them of the modern electro physiology, that is the muscular contractions obtained with the immediate contact of a nerve and the correspondent muscle.
 
1797 The Memories exit on the animal electricity, than Galvani it dedicates to Lazzaro Spallanzani, one of the greater scientists of the age and supporter of the animal electricity. In this text they are brought back, among other things, the searches on the torpedo lead from Galvani on the Adriatic coast a pair of years before. 4 December Galvani dies to Bologna, in the house of the private brother and of all its governmental functions in order to be refused little before lend oath to the constitution of the Cisalpina Republic, settled from the French. 
 
1800 Volta announces the invention of the battery, thus inaugurating a completely new age in the history of modern science. The battery comes considered from the majority of the contemporaries like the sign of the Victoria of the ideas of Time on those of Galvani. It will be necessary to wait for the half of the 1900's and the searches of the English physiologist Alan Hodgkin for having the definitive demonstration that, as it supported Galvani, exists an organic electricity, which it is found in condition of imbalance inside of the body and is in charge of fundamental physiological processes like the nervous conduction and the muscular contraction.