The real electric frankenstein experiments of the 1800s answers

Documents #1 and #2

Reading Directions: Read document #1 first. Document #2 is an example of a newspaper article that the author of document #1 uses as evidence. You should have documents #1 and #2 in mind when considering the guiding questions below.

Guiding Questions: 1. What are galvanic experiments? What exactly does reanimation in this context? 2. Why do you think newspapers often referred to these galvanic experiments as

“miracles”?

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276 LEONARDO, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 276–277, 2015 doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01031 ©2015 ISAST

Fig. 1. Giovanni Aldini. From Essai theoretique experimental sur le Galvanisme. Paris: Fournier, 1804. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London.

“DEAD EYES OPEN”: THE ROLE OF EXPERIMENTS IN GALVANIC REANIMATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY POPULAR CULTURE Elizabeth Stephens, Southern Cross University, Australia. Email: <elizabeth.stephens@scu.edu.au>. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/48/3> for supplemental files associated with this issue. Abstract During the first decades of the 19th century, a number of prominent scientists conducted experiments in the revival of dead organisms using new galvanic technologies. In several cases, these experiments were conducted on human bodies, using the corpses of executed crim- inals. Such experiments captured the cultural imaginary of the day, posing new questions about the relationship between emergent tech- nologies, automated movement, and human agency. This article exam- ines the role played by spectacle, aesthetics, and new practices and technologies of visualization in these scientific experiments. Keywords: galvanic reanimation, popular science, reflex action

On January 18, 1803, Giovanni Aldini, Professor of Physics at the University of Bologna, conducted a series of galvanic ex- periments on the body of George Forster at the Royal College of Surgeons in London (Fig. 1). Aldini was in England to fur- ther the work of his uncle, Luigi Galvani. In the 1780s, Galva- ni, also working at the University of Bologna, had attached a metal rod to the legs of a dissected frog during a thunderstorm; with every flash of lightning he saw its muscles quiver and twitch, as though it were alive. In De viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari (1791), Galvani proposed that the movement of these muscles was evidence of “animal electricity,” or a naturally occurring bio-electricity. After Galvani’s death in 1798, Aldini started travelling across Europe, electrifying the bodies of dead animals in public demonstrations staged as the- atrical spectacles [1]. After he conducted one such experiment before members of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, involving the galvanic reanimation of the decapitated head of a dog, Aldini received several professional requests to reproduce this experiment, this time using a human body.

Experiments in the galvanic reanimation of human bodies were obviously much more difficult to stage, as human corpses were much harder to procure. Only the bodies of executed criminals were legally permitted to be dissected and subject to scientific experimentation. For this reason, Aldini’s attempt to reanimate the body of George Forster was the most dramatic and high profile of his career.

Forster had been hung an hour previously at Newgate Pris- on, for drowning his wife and youngest child in the Paddington Canal. Before an audience that included members of the Royal College of Surgeons and other eminent scientific figures, Aldini attached conducting rods to Forster’s face, torso and rectum. An account of what happened next was published in The London Review, a popular journal that featured reports on notable events around town:

On the first application of the process to the face, the jaw of the deceased criminal began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye actually opened. In the subse- quent part of the process, the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion. It ap- peared to many of the bye-standers [sic] as if the wretched man was on the eve of being restored to life [2].

This grim spectacle, in which a dead body was jerked around like a puppet by a new scientific technology before the horri- fied and astonished eyes of an audience, captured the popular imaginary in the 19th century [3]. While the immediate audi- ence for Aldini’s attempt to reanimate Forster’s body was a small one made up of medical and scientific men, the sensa- tional reporting of the case in the popular press meant that news of the event also achieved broad circulation.

As the historian of popular science Iwan Rhys Morus has shown, such public spectacles staged by “showmen scientists” constituted a significant site of scientific experimentation in the early 19th century and served to encourage rapid techno- logical development [4]. While the impact of scientific exper- iments on the rise of popular and spectacular cultures has been well recognized, the extent to which such spectacles contribut- ed to the development of scientific cultures remains relatively under-examined. By contextualizing these experiments in gal- vanic reanimation within the visual and popular culture of their time, we can fully appreciate their wider cultural significance. Although attempts to reanimate the dead are not now accorded a place in mainstream histories of science, the popular and professional fascination they generated at the time,and their strategic use of dramatic visual displays, is nonetheless histori- cally important: It is indicative of a reliance on visual evidence as a proof of scientific claims, and it helps us understand the wider cultural impact of such research.