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