Science is Fun Fridays!

 

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, influenced by a scientific feud and our modern understanding of electricity.

By 1780, researchers knew electrical shocks could produce spasms, and wondered if electricity was involved in muscle contractions.  In 1781, Luigi Galvani was dissecting a frog near a static electricity machine, and when his assistant touched a nerve with a scalpel, the leg jumped.  He believed the electricity resided in the animal itself, and he published his findings in 1791.

This was read by Alessandro Volta, who had already discovered electrical capacitance, potential and charge.  He replicated Galvani's work but reached different conclusions, declaring that the frog was acting as the conductor.  He replaced the frog leg with brine-soaked paper and detected a current.

So this is where the feud began.

Enter Galvini's nephew, Giovanni Aldini, who would demonstrate jolting corpses and making decapitated criminals sit upright.  Most famously, he held an exhibition in London in 1803, with the recently executed George Foster.

He inserted metal rods in the mouth and ear, and when electricity was applied, the face quivered, one eye opened, the right hand raised and clenched...not surprisingly, a few observers thought Aldini was bringing him back to life.

There is little doubt that Mary was well aware of this.  Leading electrical researchers, Humphrey Davy and William Nicholson, were friends of her father.

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The idea of reanimating the dead, of Frankenstein's monster, is one of the most persistent in our horror storytelling.  There have been numerous remakes and reimaginings of this premise, since the first short was made in 1910.

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