The Real Dr. Frankenstein — The Mad Science of Prof. Giovanni Aldini.In the late 18th century

The Real Dr. Frankenstein — The Mad Science of Prof. Giovanni Aldini.In the late 18th century Dr. Giovanni Aldini was a physics professor and anatomist who had a strange theory.  After conducting experiments in which he stimulated the legs of a frog with electricity, he concluded that the energy of life was electricity.  Aldini also conducted his experiments with other animals such as dogs and cows.  When he would subject the brain, spine, or muscles with an electrical current, the corpse would twitch and move.  From the late 18th to the early 19th century Aldini traveled across Europe giving public demonstrations of his experiments to help gain popularity for his theory.  In 1803, he planned his most ambitious demonstration yet, the “reanimation of a human corpse.  On January 18th, 1803 the murderer George Foster was executed by hanging.  Since at the time the law prevented the Christian burial of executed criminals, many such corpses were donated to science.  Shortly afterward, Foster’s body was donated to Albini, who used it to demonstrate his experiments to the Royal College of Physicians.  He passed electricity through the brain, which according to the observer, Mr. Pass,“The jaw began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and the left eye actually opened … The action even of those muscles furthest distant from the points of contact with the arc was so much increased as almost to give an appearance of re-animation … vitality might, perhaps, have been restored, if many circumstances had not rendered it impossible.”He passed electricity through various muscles, causing arms and legs to spasm and move, and even causing the corpse to sit up when subjected to electricity.  At the end of the experiment Aldini made the boldest claim yet.  With electricity, he believed that he could command the vital powers of life, and possibly bring the dead back to life. Needless to say, the Royal College of Physicians was shocked.  Mr. Pass himself was so shocked by what he had seen that he went home and died of fright.After his demonstration in 1803, Aldini continued his experiments with human corpses.  Other scientists too repeated his experiments, with one Scottish surgeon who momentarily restarted the heart of a corpse.  None, however, were able to create Frankenstein’s monster.While Aldini’s work today is considered ghoulish, it has a strong legacy in pop culture and science.  It is said that the work of Aldini inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein in 1818, today considered the most popular horror novel in history. More importantly Aldini’s theories form a foundation for modern medicine and physiology as it is a common fact that the human body is functions using electro-chemical processes.  Perhaps Aldini’s greatest legacy is in one device, the electrocardiac defibrillator, a device which has brought brought the dead back to life on a number of occasions. -- source link
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