In the 1780s, Luigi Galvani watched frog muscles twitch near a spark; the accident launched “animal electricity” and helped spark modern electrophysiology

An early 1780s experiment with a frog leg and static electricity led to a significant scientific discovery. Luigi Galvani observed that dead frog legs twitched when touched by a scalpel and metal. He theorized that living tissues possessed their own inherent electrical charge, which he termed animal electricity. This groundbreaking work sparked a debate with Alessandro Volta, who invented the first electric battery.