Giovanni Aldini was the nephew of Luigi Galvani, the man who discovered that a dead frogs legs could be made to kick with the application of a spark.
Aldini carried out similar experiments, but took them to the next level once he obtained the corpses of freshly executed criminals.
A Murderer Waits
'On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion.'
-The Newgate Calendar.
The corpse being experimented on belonged to a man named George Forster who was tried and found guilty of murdering his wife and child in 1802. The method by which he murdered his family was to drown them in the Paddington Canal in London.
The body of his child was found first and later, after the canal had been 'dragged', the body of his wife was discovered. Although Forster tried to put together an alibi, many witnesses poked holes in his story, seeing him at places linked to the crime. He was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged until he was dead.
Just before his execution on 18 January, 1803, Forster confessed to his crime, and added he had attempted to drown them in the canal on two other separate occasions, but his nerves had failed him.
While waiting in his cell in the time leading up to his execution, Forster had also attempted suicide by stabbing himself with a knife in the chest. This was not out of remorse, but rather to save himself from potential future harm.
Surely being hanged until one was dead would not necessitate having to save one self from further harm... Well unfortunately, back in those days, when knowledge of the human body was still quite crude, it was not entirely unknown for a person to be hanged, declared dead, only to later regain consciousness.
Having to be re-hanged would be a pretty nasty thing, but in the mid 1700's in England, a 'Murder Act' was passed that said hanged criminals could not be buried.
And what happened to a majority of these executed criminals corpses?
Step in Giovanni
Off to the schools of anatomy they went to be examined, experimented on, and dissected. Forster obviously did not want to wake up mid dissection, but luckily for him the hang man did a good job, and he was thoroughly dead, been left to hang in sub zero temperatures before he was handed over to Giovanni Aldini.
Giovanni Aldini was an Italian physicist, whose main field of interest was, funnily enough, anatomy and the preservation of human life.
He was the nephew of Luigi Galvani who was quite famous for his studies in 'bioelectricity' (a field of study that looks at electromagnetic fields and how they interact with biological organisms). Galvani found that dead frogs legs could be made to twitch when touched by a spark. He coined the term 'animal electricity' in regards to the 'electric liquid that travelled to the muscles by the nerves' and as such, had the phenomenon where muscles could be made to respond to electricity named after him - galvanism.
Giovanni Aldini was an enthusiastic proponent of his uncles experiment with stimulating muscles with electricity, and when he received his first whole, fresh, executed criminals corpse, he set to work manipulating it.
Devilish Practices?
He hooked up Forster's dead body to rudimentary batteries that provided the necessary spark to cause the muscles to contract and relax. By touching various muscles, he was able to get the body to do some fascinating things, such as raising its arm and clenching and unclenching the fist. The legs were made to kick. The face was made to tremble, the jaw to shudder, and he even managed to get one eye to open.
Back in those days such experiments were not shut away in a lab, but rather were done with witnesses present. Quite a few of those who watched the experiment thought that Aldini was reviving the body, bringing it back to life. Aldini himself was convinced he might have revived the body, had the blood not been drained and the spinal cord severed.
Quite a spectacle it would no doubt have made in the eyes of those who watched. Aldini would continue on with these experiments (carried out in the Royal College of Physicians), that by some were seen to be 'devilish', and it is thought that these activities may have formed some of the inspiration for Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'.
However, some witnesses to this initial experiment on George Forster's body could not handle seeing such an unnatural practice carried out. The beadle of the Surgeons' Company, Mr Pass, actually died of fright!
