Galvanism

Luigi Galvani's twitching frog legs, Bologna, 1780s Galvani was dissecting frogs near an electrostatic generator when an assistant touched a scalpel to an exposed nerve and the leg kicked. The chance part was the timing; the years of follow-up were deliberate, and he waited until 1791 to publish, arguing for an electrical fluid inherent in the body. Alessandro Volta disagreed, insisting the charge came from outside the frog, and the experiments he ran to prove it produced the voltaic pile, an early battery. Galvani was right that muscles respond to electricity and wrong about where this charge came from, and the quarrel pushed both nerve physiology and electrochemistry forward.