What does it take to galvanise you into action?
The word originated with Luigi Galvani, an 18th century Italian scientist. In his most famous experiment he ran electricity through the legs of a dead frog, which then twitched, thus spawning the area of study known as bioelectricity. With his fellow scientist Alessandro Volta (from whom we get the word Volt, but more about that another day), he had a long-running dispute about why the dead frog actually moved – did the energy come from inside or outside the animal? It was Volta who came up with the term “galvanism” meaning a direct current of electricity generated by chemical activity. It later took on the wider meaning of suddenly jolting a person into action.
A twist on the story is the connection with Frankenstein (yes, another word of the day). The author of the first Frankenstein book, Mary Shelley, included Galvini’s publications on a recommended reading list!
Galvinisation also refers to the chemical process of electroplating iron or steel with zinc.
