Many biology classes mention Luigi Galvani’s experiment from 1781 where he electrically stimulated an amputated frog leg, which made the leg twitch. This was revolutionary because it linked electricity to movements and life. What they don’t tell you in these classes is that:
- During this time, many scientists believed that a psychic fluid in our bodies controlled movement. (That there wasn’t much of a divide between science and superstition.)
- The electrical stimulation was actually a lightning strike to a metal rod with a wire strung to the frog leg.
- The connection between light and electricity to movements led some people to believe that our body transferred information at the speed of light.
Eventually, researchers understood that information within our body does not travel at the speed of light. But before the existence of neurons were realized, there were two competing ideas about the cellular organization of the brain. One was the Neuron Doctrine, which states that individual cells (neurons) make up the brain. The other was the Reticular Theory, which states that the brain is a fused meshwork of many cells that are not discrete. (Think a bowl of spaghetti that’s one continuous noodle versus regular length noodles.) This was a heated debate involving Nobel laureates on both sides until the early 1900’s; Cajal behind the Neurone Doctrine and Golgi behind the Reticular Theory. Obviously, the Neuron Doctrine “won,” but the separation between the cells were not imaged until the 1950’s when electron microscopy was invented.
Originally posted on Instagram October 6 & 4, 2018 (2 posts)
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