Trends in Neurosciences
PerspectiveThe bicentennial of the Voltaic battery (1800–2000): the artificial electric organ
Section snippets
Volta–Galvani: physics versus physiology
Volta’s interest in the medical and physiological problems connected to the study of electricity has been obscured by a historical tradition that tends to view him as a champion of physics who was opposed to the champion of physiology and medicine, Luigi Galvani. The well-known controversy between these two scientists concerned the origin of the electricity involved in the muscle contractions brought about by metallic conductors in frog preparations: Volta the physicist asserting that this
Natural and artificial electric organs
Volta started his experimental studies on the effects of electricity in muscle contraction in 1792, after reading the recently published account of Galvani’s experiments4. However, his interest in the involvement of electricity in ‘animal economy’ (that is, ‘physiology’ in a broad sense) pre-dated the publication of Galvani’s work, as documented by a letter he addressed ten years earlier to Mme de Nanteuil5.
In this letter, Volta discussed the possibility of the existence of a genuine ‘animal
Volta’s electro–physiological experiments
In the work of Volta, ‘electrical-physiological’ does not only allude to the possibility of reproducing in a physical device the electric phenomena of living organisms. In the course of the studies that led to the invention of electric battery, Volta made a series of important observations of proper physiological relevance that have been largely ignored by the scientific tradition. This is perhaps also the consequence of the artificial limits that exists between physics and physiology, erected
Concluding remarks
It is interesting to note that the communication to the Royal Society in 1800 on the invention of the battery is to a large extent concerned with results and discussions of physiological relevance. In the final pages, after discussing at length the effects of the electricity of the battery in promoting sensations and movements, Volta wrote1,
All the facts which I have related in this long paper in regard to the action which the electric fluid, when excited and when moved by my apparatus,
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Lucia Galli-Resta and Lionel Lovitch for critically reading the manuscript, Liramalala Rakotobe for collaboration, and Livia Iannucci, Carlo Alberto Segnini and Monica Tortora for help in accessing old scientific literature.
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