Sacramento, CA
Parapsychology Plus
Ghost Vigil
Investigations
May 28, 2007
parts and bringing it to life did not come from thin-air. It was certainly based on the science of the era. I
watched a television show on this (Decoding the Past), and thought it might be fun to pull together some
information from around the internet about the real Dr. Frankenstein...
English Romantic novelist best know as the author of Frankenstein (1818).
The only daughter of social philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary
Godwin met the young poet percy Bysshe Shelley in the spring of 1814 and eloped with him to
France in July of that year. The couple were married in 1816, after Shelley's first wife had
committed suicide. Mary apparently came as near as any woman could to meeting Shelley's
requirements for his life's partner: "one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy."
After her husband's death in 1822, she returned to England and devoted herself to publicizing
Shelley's writings and to educating their only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. She
published her late husband's Postumous Poems (1824), and she also edited his Poetical Works
(1839), with long and invaluable notes, and his prose works. Her Journal and letters are a rich
source of biographical information.
Mary Shelley's best-known novel is Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, in which she
narrates the dreadful consequences that arise after a scientist has artificially created a human
being. The novel belongs to the contemporary gothic school, which used horror as its primary
device. It offered fertile ground for such typically Romantic themes as the relationship of science
to humanity and the embodied alter ego.
Doctor Frankenstein undoubtedly needed a strong stomach and nerves of steel to bring his creature into
the world. What is less clear is exactly what sort of laboratory equipment was required. The animation
scene in Mary Shelley’s book is as vague about this as it is melodramatic about atmosphere: “With an
anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a
spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning [..] when, by the
glimmer of the half extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a
convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”
Despite the lack of details, we naturally tend to picture this as an electrical moment, with force fields
humming and electrodes crackling as the body on the slab comes to life. This image derives entirely from
movie versions, and is not directly supported by the book. Yet Shelley does give us a few hints. As well as
using evocative phrases such as “spark of being”, she tells us that as a child, Victor Frankenstein received
his own spark of inspiration from the sight of a tree being struck by lightning.
Shelley herself took a keen interest in the science of her day, and especially in electrical matters. Her
husband Percy Bysshe Shelley was even more enthusiastic, and had once accidentally killed the family cat
whilst trying to give it electrotherapy. (He attempted something similar on his sister, but she was luckier and
survived.) The Shelleys and their circle frequently discussed scientific subjects, and let their imaginations
roam on the wilder shores of philosophy.
In the Preface to Frankenstein, Mary describes the particular conversation which gave her the idea for the
story. First, someone mentioned an experiment thought to have been conducted by Erasmus Darwin –
“who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with
voluntary motion.” From this, they speculated that “perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had
given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought
together, and endued with vital warmth.” There was then some talk of experiments by mysterious “German
scientists.” That night, the impressionable 18-year-old suffered bouts of insomnia alternating with
terrifying dreams, in which she saw “the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working
of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.” On waking, she
sprang to her desk with the glee of a born horror writer (“What terrified me will terrify others”) and at once
set to work on Frankenstein.
story, and that she was well aware of them. So who were these mysterious galvanists, the real-life
Frankensteins who had “given token of such things”?
This idea rested primarily on the work of a new theorist of the subject, named Luigi Galvani (1737-98). He
used the phrase “animal electricity” to describe the electric charge which he believed was generated by the
nervous power of the body, and whose existence he demonstrated by applying conductors to detached
frogs’ legs to make them move in a lifelike manner. Galvani’s interpretation of his results was far from
accurate, as was soon pointed out, but his vision of electrophysiology remained influential. Below, we'll talk
about Galvani, Aldini, Ure, and Dippel...
A century and a half after Galileo's death, something of scientific importance was to develop in Italy.
During the 1780's, biologist Luigi Galvani performed experiments at the University of Bologna involving
electric charges and frogs. It had been found that a charge applied to the spinal cord of a frog could
generate muscular spasms throughout its body. Charges could make frog legs jump even if the legs were no
longer attached to a frog. While cutting a frog leg, Galvani's steel scalpel touched a brass hook that was
holding the leg in place. The leg twitched. Further experiments confirmed this effect, and Galvani was
convinced that he was seeing the effects of what he called animal electricity, the life force within the muscles
of the frog. At the University of Pavia, Galvani's colleague Alessandro Volta was able to reproduce the
results, but was skeptical of Galvani's explanation.
The Italian anatomist and physician Luigi Galvani was one of the first to investigate experimentally the
phenomenon of what came to be named "bioelectrogenesis". In a series of experiments started around
1780, Galvani, working at the University of Bologna, found that the electric current delivered by a
Leyden jar or a rotating static electricity generator would cause the contraction of the muscles in the leg of
a frog and many other animals, either by applying the charge to the muscle or to the nerve.
In the strange case of Galvani's frog, this twitching happened even when its legs were not in a direct circuit
with the machine. Galvani had placed the lower section of a dissected frog on a table near a plate-type
electrical machine.
Then two things occurred simultaneously causing Galvani to stop and wonder. An assistant was drawing a
spark from the brass conductor of the electrical machine when a knife held in his hand touched the crural or
sciatic nerve passing through the lower part of the spine into the frog's legs. There was an immediate twitch
of the muscles and a kick of the legs as if a severe cramp had set in.
Galvani wrote, "While one of those who were assisting me touched lightly, and by chance, the point of his
scalpel to the internal crural nerves of the frog, suddenly all the muscles of its limbs were seen to be so
contracted that they seemed to have fallen into tonic convulsions.
Giovanni Aldini, Galvani's nephew, was the greatest of all Galvani’s supporters. He helped to organize a
society at Bologna to foster the practices of galvanism in opposition to a Volta society established at
the University of Pavia. Aldini traveled all over Europe publicly electrifying human and animal bodies, and
his performances were extraordinary theatrical spectacles.
"Galvani knew that metals transmitted this mysterious substance called electricity, and came to the obvious
conclusion that some kind of electricity - which he called "animal electricity" - was generated in the tissue of
the frog and, flowing through the metal skewer and fence, activated the frog's muscles. He distinguished
this kind of electricity from "artificial electricity" generated by friction (static electricity) and from "natural
electricity" such as lightning. He thought of "animal electricity" as a fluid secreted by the brain, and
proposed that flow of this fluid through the nerves activated the muscles.
Galvani's remarkable experiments helped to establish the basis for the biological study of
neurophysiology and neurology. The paradigm shift was complete: nerves were not water pipes or
channels, as Descartes and his contemporaries thought, but electrical conductors. Information within the
nervous system was carried by electricity generated directly by the organic tissue. As the result of the
experimental demonstrations carried out by Luigi Galvani and his followers, the electrical nature of the
nerve-muscle function was unveiled. However, a direct proof could only be made when scientists could be
able to measure or to detect the natural electrical currents generated in the nervous and muscular cells.
Galvani did not have the technology to measure these currents, because they were too small.
Luigi Galvani was appointed Reader in Anatomy at the University in 1762. His skill as a surgeon soon
won him the Chair of Obstetrics at the Institute of Sciences, of which he was to become president in
1772. His investigations into the structure of animal organs established him as one of the founders of
modern electro-technology at the end of the eighteenth century, alongside his contemporaries Henry
Cavendish, Benjamin Franklin and Alessandro Volta. He was the first to discover the physiological action
of electricity. His subsequent experiments in making the exposed muscles and nerves of a frog contract
when connected to a demonstrated the existence of bioelectric forces in animal tissue.
This gave rise to a disagreement between Galvani and Volta over the explanation of the phenomenon,
about which each was partly right. His work was nevertheless instrumental in leading Volta to the invention
of the first electric battery. Galvani held his Chair for 33 years but was dismissed in 1797 following the
occupation of the country by the Napoleonic army. Being a man of integrity, he refused to take the oath
of allegiance required of him by the invader. He died the following year.
The name Galvanization is derived from Luigi Galvani, and was once used as the name for the
administration of electric shocks (also termed in the 19th century Faradism, named after Michael Faraday),
this stems from Galvani's induction of twitches in severed frog's legs, by his accidental generation of
electricity. This now archaic sense is the origin of the meaning of galvanized when used to describe
someone stirred to sudden, abrupt action.
Giovanni Aldini was the nephew of Luigi Galvani. He became professor of physics at Bologna in 1798, in
succession to his teacher Sebastiano Canterzani (1734-1819). His scientific work was chiefly concerned
with galvanism and its medical applications, with the construction and illumination of lighthouses, and with
experiments for preserving human life and material objects from destruction by fire.
Giovanni Aldini was the greatest of all Galvani’s supporters. He helped to organize a society at Bologna
to foster the practices of galvanism in opposition to a Volta society established at the University of Pavia.
Aldini traveled all over Europe publicly electrifying human and animal bodies, and his performances were
extraordinary theatrical spectacles. In 1802 Giovanni Aldini came to London with a spectacular
demonstration. Such spectacles performed on humans (and ox heads) produced repeated, spasmodic
movements of facial muscles, arms, and legs. He stimulated the heads and trunks of cows, horses, sheep and
dogs. An eyewitness reported: "Aldini, after having cut off the head of a dog, makes the current of a
strong battery go through it: the mere contact triggers really terrible convulsions. The jaws open, the teeth
chatter, the eyes roll in their sockets; and if reason did not stop the fired imagination, one would almost
believe that the animal is suffering and alive again". (reference)
Though a showman in many respects, Aldini was among the first to treat mentally ill patients with shocks to
the brain, reporting complete electrical cures for a number of mental illnesses. These experiments were
described in details in Aldini's book published in London in 1803 "An account of the late improvements in
galvanism, with a series of curious and interesting experiments performed before the commissioners of the
French National Institute, and repeated lately in the anatomical theaters of London, by John Aldini." It
was an influential book on galvanism, that presented for the first time a series of experiments in which the
principles of Volta and Galvani were used together. The fine series of plates illustrated the experiments
which involved bodies and heads of animals and humans. For the first time a description appears here of the
magnetization of steel needles through connection to a voltaic circuit.
The most famous experiment took place at the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1803, on a
hanged man named George Forster. Anatomical dissection had formed part of Forster’s death sentence,
but no one could have visualized quite the violation that Aldini was going to inflict on him. Before a large
medical and general audience, he took a pair of conducting rods linked to a powerful battery, and touched
the rods to various parts of the body in turn. The results were dramatic. When the rods were applied to
Forster’s mouth and ear, “the jaw began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and the
left eye actually opened.” When one rod was moved to touch the rectum, the whole body convulsed:
indeed, the movements were “so much increased as almost to give an appearance of re-animation”.
And so it went on, with Aldini moving the two rods around the body in a different combinations like a
switchboard operator. According to newspaper reports of the time, some of the spectators genuinely
believed that the body was about to come to life, and were suitably awestruck even though it did not
happen. But Aldini himself gave no indication that he expected any such thing – although he did describe
his ultimate aim as learning how to “command the vital powers.” In practice, he confined himself to concluding
that galvanism “exerted a considerable power over the nervous and muscular systems.” He also noted that
nothing could be done with the heart.
In recognition of his merits, the emperor of Austria made him a knight of the Iron Crown and a councilor of
state at Milan, where he died on the 17th of January 1834. He left by will a considerable sum to found a
school of natural science for artisans at Bologna.
Andrew Ure was born in Glasgow on 18th May 1778. Born into a wealthy family, Ure received an
expensive education. After periods at Glasgow University and Edinburgh University, he became
professor of chemistry and natural philosophy at Anderson College, Glasgow.
While in Glasgow Ure established a course of popular scientific lectures for working men in the city. In
December 1818 he created a public sensation when he announced that he had been carrying out
experiments on a murderer called Clydsdale after his execution. Ure claimed that by stimulating the phrenic
nerve, life could be restored in cases of suffocation, drowning or hanging.
It has been claimed that Mary Shelley used Ure as a model for her main character in the book,
Frankenstein (1818).
In 1821 Ure published his book, Dictionary of Chemistry. It was considered such an important book that
it was translated into French (by J. Riffault) and German (by K. Karmarsch). His next book, New System
of Geology (1829), he pointed out the importance of chemistry and physics to the geologist.
Ure became a chemist carrying out research for the British government and several private companies. This
included work as an analytical chemist for the Board of Customs.
In 1834 Ure travelled around the factory districts of Britain. His book The Philosophy of
Manufacturers was published in 1835. In the preface of the book he claimed that he had written the book
so that "masters, managers, and operatives would follow the straight paths of improvement" and hoped that
it would help "prevent them from pursuing dangerous ideas".
Ure followed this with several other books including Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines (1839),
The Revenue in Jeopardy from Spurious Chemistry (1843) and The General Malaria of London
(1850). Andrew Ure died in London on 2nd January 1857.
Johann Conrad Dippel (August 10, 1673 on Frankenstein Castle (Bergstrasse)-April 25, 1734 at
Wittgenstein Castle near Bad Laasphe) was a German pietist theologian, alchemist and physician.
He studied theology, philosophy and alchemy at the University of Giessen obtaining a master degree in
theology in 1693. He published many theological works under the name Christianus Democritus, most of
them are still preserved. He led a very adventurous life, and often got into trouble because of his disputed
opinions (and because of money). He wrote that religion should not be dogma, but rather, should be
exclusively love and self-sacrifice.[1]
During his stay in Frankenstein Castle he practiced alchemy and anatomy. While at Frankenstein Castle
he created an an animal oil known as Dippel's Oil which was supposed to be the equivalent to the Elixer of
Life. Working with nitroglycerin he destroyed a tower, but also detected the medicinal use of it. It is
rumored that he also preformed gruesome experiments within this tower with so called “cadavers.” Though
the actual details of the experiments have never been truly confirmed it is rumored that he attempted to
transfer the soul of one cadaver into another. (It should be noted that this particular experiment was only
rumored to have happened but, he did perform some gruesome experiment that eventually got him kicked out
of town.) When word of his gruesome experiments reached the ears of town’s people he was thrown out of
town. In 1704 in Berlin, he and the manufacturer Heinrich Diesbach applied this oil instead of potassium
carbonate in producing red dyes. To their surprise they obtained a blue dye "Berliner Blau", also called
"Preussisch Blau" or "Prussian blue". Together they founded a factory in Paris.
His connection to the Castle Frankenstein (near Darmstadt/Germany) is evident as his birthplace and he
signed letters with the addendum Frankensteinensis. But the idea that he was influential to Mary Shelley's
novel Frankenstein remains controversial. Local historians believe that the legends told in the villages
surrounding the castle were transmitted by Jacob Grimm to the translator of Grimm's fairy tales, Mary
Jane Clairmont, the stepmother of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. In 1814, on their way to Lake Geneva,
Mary, her stepsister Claire Clairmont and Percy Bysshe Shelley are said to have visited castle
Frankenstein.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/139_reanimators.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/index.htm
http://eric.b.olsen.tripod.com/shelley.html
And others I forgot to record!
Mark Stinson
Founder/Lead Analyst of Ghost Vigil Investigations
http://www.ghostvigil.com
All Rights Reserved.
