Shelley even references galvanism in the 1831 edition of the book, citing it as an example of how the Frankenstein experiment could be possible.
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Electricity was being used in a scientific practice called "galvanism," which seemed to show some promise in reanimating body parts of recently dead animals and humans.
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Initially unable to come up with an idea, Mary Shelley then had a "waking dream" in which she imagined a corpse reanimated by "galvanism," or electricity.
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Writing her imaginary story of a being jolted to life by Victor Frankenstein, Mary drew on the cutting-edge science of her time, including galvanism and electricity.
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Galvanism is well represented (one engraving from 1803 shows the Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini electrifying the corpse of a hanged man to animate his limbs), but Frayling omits images illustrating the grisly underbelly of anatomical studies.
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The mid-1800s gave rise to experiments with newly discovered electricity, galvanism and attempts to bring the dead back to life, and Shelley and her intellectual contemporaries spent hours discussing these experiments and their implications for the world.
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It's a storytelling technique that could turn into biopic cliche, but Al-Mansour wisely keeps the moments to a minimum and frames them more as subtle, true-to-life inspirations — a stage performer briefly touting the effects of galvanism, for example — rather than moments of ah-ha!
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Walther is credited with performing numerous experiments involving medical galvanism. He died in Munich.
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Galvanism and voltaism are almost identical, since the latter is founded upon, and is a development of, the former.
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The phenomenon was dubbed galvanism, after Galvani and his wife, on the suggestion of his peer and sometime intellectual adversary Alessandro Volta. The Galvanis are properly credited with the discovery of bioelectricity. Today, the study of galvanic effects in biology is called electrophysiology, the term galvanism being used only in historical contexts.
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"Robertson's Phantasmagoria". Accessed 29 July 2007. Robert experimented with various areas of physics, giving public demonstrations about his research into galvanism and optics in the 1790s and early 19th century.
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Odoyevsky took part in development of electroplating technology, invented by Moritz von Jacobi in Russia. In 1844 Odoyevsky wrote a book, Galvanism applied in technology (Гальванизм в техническом применении). He made a number of experiments and developed cobalt electroplating.
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While Volta theorized and later demonstrated the phenomenon of his "Galvanism" to be replicable with otherwise inert materials, Galvani thought his discovery to be a confirmation of the existence of "animal electricity," a vital force which gave life to organic matter.
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Edwin James Houston, "Electricity in Everyday Life", Chapter XXII. P. F. Collier & Son, 1905. Despite their differences in opinion, Volta named the phenomenon of the chemical generation of electricity "Galvanism" after Galvani. On March 27, 1791, Galvani published a book about his work on animal electricity.
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Galvanism: electrodes touch a frog, and the legs twitch into the upward positionDavid Ames Wells, The science of common things: a familiar explanation of the first principles of physical science. For schools, families, and young students., Publisher Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman, 1859, 323 pages (page 290) Cartoon of a galvanized corpse Galvanism is a term invented by the late 18th C. physicist and chemist, Alessandro Volta, to refer to the generation of electrical current by chemical action. The term also came to refer to the discoveries of its namesake, Luigi Galvani, specifically the generation of electrical current within biological organisms and the contraction/convulsion of biological muscle tissue upon contact with electrical current.
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He calls her a hypocrite, and she expresses her disappointment in him. Later, Mary, Claire and Shelley attend a public display of galvanism in which a dead frog is made to twitch by the application of electricity. Also in the audience is the handsome and famous poet Lord Byron. Claire introduces herself, and is smitten.
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Electric shock treatment with an Oudin coil Use of electrical apparatus. Interrupted galvanism used in regeneration of deltoid muscle. First half of the twentieth century. The first recorded treatment of a patient by electricity was by Johann Gottlob Krüger in 1743. John Wesley promoted electrical treatment as a universal panacea in 1747 but was rejected by mainstream medicine.
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Friction electrostatic generators: cylinder (left) and disc (right) designs. According to Bird, the disc design has a greater power output, while the simpler construction of the cylinder makes it easier to operate.Bird, Lectures on Electricity, pp. 104–105 It was already clear from the work of Michael Faraday that electricity and galvanism were essentially the same.
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Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse. New York, 2003, p. 167 In an 1845 book Vail wrote describing Morse's telegraph, he also attributed the code to Morse.Alfred Vail, The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph: With the Reports of Congress, and a Description of all Telegraphs Known, Employing Electricity or Galvanism, Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1845.
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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, wherein a man stitches together a human body from the corpses of the dead, and brings it to life by application of electricity, was inspired in part by the theory and demonstrations of Galvanism. It is also used by Car Seat Headrest in the song "Nervous Young Inhumans" from Twin Fantasy, in which he (incorrectly) uses the term 'Galvanistic', instead of 'Galvanic'.
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He "dies" and is revived several times in the course of his career. This afforded the author a variety of origin stories. In one of these, a medical student named Dr Chillingworth applies galvanism to Varney's hanged corpse and revives him. This sub-plot parallels the earlier story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and film adaptations which introduce electricity as Dr Frankenstein's means of creating the monster.
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In 1807 Cuthbertson published Practical Electricity and Galvanism. 50px Material was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This book was partly intended to encourage the sale of scientific instruments for home or school experiments and partly to explain the medical uses of electricity. The home experiments are described as ‘easy and pleasing to the young practitioner’.
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Curtis p. 210 The following day, the dissection and post-mortem were carried out in front of an audience of students from Cambridge University and physicians. Reports circulated around Bury St Edmunds that a "galvanic battery" had been brought from Cambridge, and it is likely that the group experimented with galvanism on the body;McCorristine p. 31 a battery was attached to Corder's limbs to demonstrate the contraction of the muscles.
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Dr Thomas Garnett is the lecturer, holding the victim's nose. In February 1801 Davy was interviewed by the committee of the Royal Institution, comprising Joseph Banks, Benjamin Thompson (who had been appointed Count Rumford) and Henry Cavendish. Davy wrote to Davies Gilbert on 8 March 1801 about the offers made by Banks and Thompson, a possible move to London and the promise of funding for his work in galvanism.
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Interactions of organisms with electromagnetic fields from across the electromagnetic spectrum are part of bioelectromagnetic studies. Bioelectromagnetism is studied primarily through the techniques of electrophysiology. In the late eighteenth century, the Italian physician and physicist Luigi Galvani first recorded the phenomenon while dissecting a frog at a table where he had been conducting experiments with static electricity. Galvani coined the term animal electricity to describe the phenomenon, while contemporaries labeled it galvanism.
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He was knighted in 1847 after the system had been adopted and shown successful, and was given a grant of £5,000. Though his continued research did not find new discoveries, his manuals of Electricity, Galvanism and Magnetism were published between 1848 and 1856 and went through several editions. When he died in Plymouth on 22 January 1867 he had a Treatise on Frictional Electricity in preparation, and it was published later that year.
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When they arrive, Byron makes it clear that the "invitation" is little more than Claire's wishful thinking. He asks them to stay in any event. The poor weather keeps them indoors for days, and one evening Byron challenges the group to write a ghost story, a task which captures Mary's imagination and causes her to dream of galvanism. A message arrives for Shelley informing him that his wife has just drowned herself.
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When Davy's lecture series on Galvanism ended, he progressed to a new series on Agricultural Chemistry, and his popularity continued to skyrocket. By June 1802, after just over a year at the Institution and at the age of 23, Davy was nominated to full lecturer at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Garnett quietly resigned, citing health reasons. In November 1804 Davy became a Fellow of the Royal Society, over which he would later preside.
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Giovanni Aldini (April 10, 1762 – January 17, 1834), was an Italian physician and physicist born in Bologna. He was a brother of a statesman. He became professor of physics at Bologna in 1798, in succession to his uncle Luigi Galvani (1737–1798). His scientific work was chiefly concerned with galvanism, anatomy and its medical applications, with the construction and illumination of lighthouses, and with experiments for preserving human life and material objects from destruction by fire.
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Two of the most noted natural philosophers among Shelley's contemporaries were Giovanni Aldini, who made many public attempts at human reanimation through bio-electric Galvanism in London and Johann Konrad Dippel, who was supposed to have developed chemical means to extend the life span of humans. While Shelley was aware of both these men and their activities, she makes no mention of or reference to them or their experiments in any of her published or released notes.
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Volta's intuition was correct. Volta, essentially, objected to Galvani’s conclusions about "animal electric fluid", but the two scientists disagreed respectfully and Volta coined the term "Galvanism" for a direct current of electricity produced by chemical action.Luigi Galvani – IEEE Global History Network. Thus, owing to an argument between the two in regard to the source or cause of the electricity, Volta built the first battery in order to specifically disprove his associate's theory. Volta's “pile” became known therefore as a voltaic pile.
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110–11 She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes place. The topics of galvanism and occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband Percy B. Shelley. In 1816, Mary, Percy and Lord Byron had a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made, inspiring the novel.
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Lind was alluded to by Percy Bysshe Shelley in two poems from 1817, the old man who rescues Laon in The Revolt of Islam, and Prince Athanase, where he appears as the magus Zonoras. Shelley, in his final two years at Eton College, had Lind as a mentor, around 1809. He is also thought to be the source for the character of the blind old man De Lacey and galvanism in the novel Frankenstein, as applied by the eponymous Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
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In fact, it alleges that Pass, a Beadle on Aldini's payroll, fast-tracked the whole trial and legal procedure in order to obtain the freshest corpse possible for his benefactor. An illustration of a galvanised corpseAfter the execution Forster's body was given to Giovanni Aldini for experimentation. Aldini was the nephew of fellow scientist Luigi Galvani and an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle's method of stimulating muscles with electric current, known as Galvanism. The experiment he performed on Forster's body was a demonstration of this technique.
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The Indian rhinoplastic reconstruction involved using a flap of skin taken from the forehead, and was to become known in Europe as "Carpue's operation". In 1816 Carpue described the procedure in his publication of Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose from the Integument of the Forehead. Carpue was also a pioneer in experimentation with electricity in medicine, which he detailed in his treatise of An Introduction to Electricity and Galvanism, with Cases showing their Effects in the Cure of Disease.
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Frege matriculated at the University of Jena in the spring of 1869 as a citizen of the North German Confederation. In the four semesters of his studies he attended approximately twenty courses of lectures, most of them on mathematics and physics. His most important teacher was Ernst Karl Abbe (1840–1905; physicist, mathematician, and inventor). Abbe gave lectures on theory of gravity, galvanism and electrodynamics, complex analysis theory of functions of a complex variable, applications of physics, selected divisions of mechanics, and mechanics of solids.
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The use of static electrical charges and low intensity electrical currents on the human body, known as galvanism, was often used both to treat mental illness and to revive people after drowning or lightning strikes. Almost all conditions, including gout, fever, hydrocephalus, blindness, deafness and genitor-urinary infections were supposed to be treatable by the application of electricity. For Rees's Cyclopædia he contributed articles about electricity, but the topics are not known. He died in 1821 and was buried in St James's Church, Piccadilly.
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"Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things".Para. 10, Intro., Frankenstein 1831 edition It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story:Shelley, Mary, Paragraphs 11–13, "Introduction" Frankenstein (1831 edition) Gutenberg She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818.
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Giovanni Antonio Giobert also known as Jean-Antoine Giobert (October 27, 1761 in Mongardino - 14 September 1834 in Millefiori) was an Italian chemist and mineralogist who studied magnetism, galvanism, and agricultural chemistry. He introduced Antoine Lavoisier's theories to Italy, and built a phosphorus-based eudiometer sufficiently sensitive to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen. He identified the correct composition of the mineral Gioberite, a form of magnesite (MgCO3) found in the Piedmont area. He was made a knight (Cavaliere) for his work on the chemistry of indigo dyes.
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Mechanism of the slave clock The original idea for the clock network came from the Astronomer Royal, George Airy. With the arrival of the railway network, a single time standard was needed to replace the various incompatible local times then in use across the country. Airy proposed that this standard time would be provided by the Royal Observatory. His idea was to use what he called "galvanism" or electric signalling to transmit time pulses from Greenwich to slave clocks throughout the country, and perhaps to Europe and the colonies too.
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Bird used his position as head of the department of electricity and galvanism to further his research efforts and to aid him in teaching his students. He was interested in electrolysis and repeated the experiments of Antoine César Becquerel, Edmund Davy and others to extract metals in this way. He was particularly interested in the possibility of detecting low levels of heavy metal poisons with this technique, pioneered by Davy.Coley, p. 367 Bird also studied the properties of albumen under electrolysis, finding that the albumen coagulated at the anode because hydrochloric acid was produced there.
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Mary Shelley Mary Shelley (1797–1851) is remembered as the author of Frankenstein (1818). The plot of this is said to have come from a waking dream she had, in the company of Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori, following a conversation about galvanism and the feasibility of returning a corpse or assembled body parts to life, and on the experiments of the 18th-century natural philosopher and poet Erasmus Darwin, who was said to have animated dead matter.Holmes, p. 328; see also Mary Shelley’s introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein.
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In the 1931 film version of Frankenstein, Dr. Waldman (portrayed by Edward Van Sloan) was a professor of anatomical studies at Goldstadt Medical College. Waldman had been Henry Frankenstein's favourite teacher during the aspiring young scientist's time as a student there. Although Waldman had much respect for Henry's brilliance, he became increasingly disturbed when Henry began demanding fresh bodies for his experiments in chemical galvanism and electro-biology: bodies that were not those of cats and dogs, but human beings. Eventually, the increasingly ambitious Henry left the college to pursue his researches in private.
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In 1849 Charles Shepherd Junior (1830–1905),an engineer and son of a clockmaker, patented a system for controlling a network of master and slave clocks using electricity (or galvanism, as it was called). Shepherd installed the public clocks for the Great Exhibition which opened in May 1851. In October 1851, Airy wrote to Charles Shepherd asking for proposals and estimates, including a request for the following clocks: > One automatic clock. One clock with large dial to be seen by the Public, > near the Observatory entrance, and three smaller clocks, all to be moved > sympathetically with the automatic clock.
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Balfour, pp. 16–17 Payne and McConnell Bird became the first head of the electricity and galvanism department at Guy's in 1836, under the supervision of Addison, since Bird did not graduate until 1838. In 1843, he was appointed assistant physician at Guy's, a position for which he had lobbied hard, and in October that year he was put in charge of the children's outpatients ward. Like his electrotherapy patients, the children were largely poor relief cases who could not afford to pay for medical treatment and were much used for the training of medical students.
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In 1836, Bird was put in charge of the newly formed department of electricity and galvanism under the supervision of Addison. While this was not the first hospital to employ electrotherapy, it was still considered very experimental. Previous hospital uses had either been short-lived or based on the whim of a single surgeon, such as John Birch at St Thomas' Hospital. At Guy's, the treatment was part of the hospital system and became well known to the public, so much so that Guy's was parodied for its use of electricity in the New Frankenstein satirical magazine.
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Cullen and Brown, however, had a falling out. Brown was likely influenced by Cullen's ideas on the capacity for nerves and muscles to be excited or stimulated (similar to the work of Haller in Germany on 'irritability'), but Brown looked at the issue of excitation in a broader and more dynamic manner. One scholarly article relates the influence of Galvanism and Mesmerism on Brown's work. Brown himself relates in the Introduction to his magnum opus, Elementa Medicinae, that his ideas came from an attack of gout, but in a period when his dietary intake was less rather than more.
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Frankenstein's monster's bust in the National Museum of Cinema of Turin, Italy. Scholars sometimes look for deeper meaning in Shelley's story, and have drawn an analogy between the monster and a motherless child; Shelley's own mother died while giving birth to her. The monster has also been analogized to an oppressed class; Shelley wrote that the monster recognized "the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty." Others see in the monster the tragic results of uncontrolled scientific progress, especially as at the time of publishing, Galvanism had convinced many scientists that raising the dead through use of electrical currents was a scientific possibility.
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He became known to Sir John Herschel, and through him he communicated to the Royal Society papers On a New Photometer, On a New Form of the Differential Thermometer, and On the Permeability of Transparent Screens of Extreme Tenuity by Radiant Heat. Shortly afterwards he published two small treatises on geometry (1833; 3rd edit. 1853) and the differential and integral calculus (1836; 2nd edit. 1847). He communicated to the Royal Society—of which he was elected a fellow—papers On the Elasticity of Threads of Glass and the Application of this Property to Torsion Balances, and also experimental researches on the electric and chemical theories of galvanism, on electromagnetism, and voltaic electricity.
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Noad was a member of the London Electrical Society. In 1839 he published A Course of Eight Lectures on Electricity, Galvanism, Magnetism, and Electro-Magnetism, which became a recognised textbook, passing through four editions; in 1857 it gave place to A Manual of Electricity in two volumes, which was long a standard book. In 1848 he wrote a valuable treatise on Chemical Manipulation and Analysis, Qualitative and Quantitative, for the Library of Useful Knowledge, and re-wrote in 1875 A Normandy's Commercial Handbook of Chemical Analysis, a volume which meets the wants of the analyst while discharging his duties under the Adulteration Act. He died at his son's residence in High Street, Lower Norwood, Surrey, on 23 July 1877.
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Oral galvanism or amalgam disease was a term for the association of oral or systemic symptoms to either: toxic effects of amalgam fillings; or electric currents between metal in dental restorations and electrolytes in saliva or dental pulp. Any existence of galvanic pain or association of either currents or mercury to presence of symptoms has been disproven. Beyond acute allergic reaction amalgam has not been found to be associated with any adverse effects. Very weak currents have been measured in the mouth of those with multiple dental fillings consisting of different alloys, but there was no association between presence of current and symptoms, and any symptoms associated with currents between oral fillings are likely to be psychosomatic in nature.
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He also mentioned that he might not be collaborating further with Beddoes on therapeutic gases. The next day Davy left Bristol to take up his new post at the Royal Institution, it having been resolved 'that Humphry Davy be engaged in the service of the Royal Institution in the capacity of assistant lecturer in chemistry, director of the chemical laboratory, and assistant editor of the journals of the institution, and that he be allowed to occupy a room in the house, and be furnished with coals and candles, and that he be paid a salary of 100l. per annum.' On 25 April 1801, Davy gave his first lecture on the relatively new subject of 'Galvanism'.
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Paul Ludwig Simon Paul Ludwig Simon, also known as Paul Louis Simon (January 12, 1771 – February 14, 1815), was a German architect and professor at the Building Academy (Bauakademie) in the faculty of architectural physics and a privy architectural counsellor at the Prussian Higher Council of Architecture (Preußische Oberbaudeputation) in Berlin. In the latter position Simon was the predecessor of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Simon was serving as well as Senior Director of public works for the Marches of Pomerania and Prussia. Beside these fields of activity Simon did – at that time in Europe well known – research work in the field of Electrochemistry and Galvanism. He published different articles on these subjects in German scientific journals – as for example “Physics Annual” (Annalen der Physik).
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Born at Blackfriars, Bristol on 22 January 1826, he was son of George Gore, a cooper in the city. He was educated at a small private school, and at twelve became an errand boy. At 17 he was apprenticed to a cooper, following the trade for four years. In 1851 Gore moved to Birmingham, working first as timekeeper at the Soho Foundry, and then as a practitioner in medical galvanism, He subsequently became a chemist to a phosphorus factory; from 1870 to 1880, was lecturer in physics and chemistry at King Edward's School, Birmingham; and finally, from 1880 onwards, was head of the Institute of Scientific Research, Easy Row, Birmingham, which he ran, and where he resided for the remainder of his life.
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Galvanic treatment in the beauty industry has been described since at least the 1970sAnn Gallant, Body treatments and dietetics for the beauty therapist, Publisher Nelson Thornes, 1978, , , Length 392 pages (page 308) and earlier. Sometimes called galvanism, the treatment aims to improve the skin in two ways: (1) cleansing: a process called desincrustation, and (2) nourishing the skin condition, through an electro-chemical processKarl Augustus Menninger, Martin Mayman, Paul W. Pruyser, "A manual for psychiatric case study", Grune & Stratton, 1952, 355 pages (page 332) called iontophoresisSusan Cressy, The beauty therapy fact file, Edition 4, Publisher Heinemann, 2004, , . 469 pages (page 161) (also called ionisation).Ann Gallant, Kathy Gillott, Jackie Howard, Principles and techniques for the beauty specialist, Edition 3, Publisher Nelson Thornes, 1993, , , 328 pages (page 181) This is achieved by the application of a small, constant, direct current.
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Charles Sylvester (1774–1828) was a chemist and inventor born in Sheffield, in the Kingdom of Great Britain. He worked on galvanization, public building heating and sanitation, and railroad friction amongst other things. A book, Industrial Man: The Life and Works of Charles Sylvester by Ian Inkster, Ph.D., of Nottingham University, and Maureen S. Bryson, B.S., published in 1999 is a comprehensive work covering his life, his extended family and pedigree, and his published works; including Poems on Various Subjects, 1797; The Epitome of Galvanism, 1804; Appendix of the Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, 1809; Philosophy of Domestic Economy, 1819; On a Method of expressing Chemical Compounds by Algebraic Characters, 1821; On the Motions produced by the Difference in the Specific Gravity of Bodies, 1822; Report on Rail-roads and Locomotive Engines, 1825; and On the best method of Warming and Ventilating Houses and other Buildings, 1829.
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The New Annotated Frankenstein. New York: Liveright, 2017. Proponents of Percy Shelley's authorship such as Scott de Hart and Joseph P. Farrell claim that he was obsessed with electricity, galvanism, and the reanimation of corpses, and point to the influence of James Lind, Percy Shelley's former teacher at Eton College. Advocates of Percy Shelley's authorship also point out that the novel contains his poetry such as "Mutability" as well as poetry by others, that the novel was imbued with the themes of atheism, social tolerance, social justice, reform, and antipathy to monarchism that only he advocated, and that there were noticeable motifs and subjects in the novel which only he espoused, such as vegetarianism, pantheism, alchemy, incest, male friendship, and scientific discovery. However, editor Marilyn Butler, in her introduction and explanatory notes to the Oxford Press "1818 Text" edition of the novel, attributes these apparent coincidences to Percy's admiration and emulation of Mary's father, novelist William Godwin, whose works share numerous similarities in style, ideology, and subject matter with the novels of both Percy and Mary.
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When categorizing the many disciplines of science that developed during this period, Romantics believed that explanations of various phenomena should be based upon vera causa, which meant that already known causes would produce similar effects elsewhere. It was also in this way that Romanticism was very anti-reductionist: they did not believe that inorganic sciences were at the top of the hierarchy but at the bottom, with life sciences next and psychology placed even higher. This hierarchy reflected Romantic ideals of science because the whole organism takes more precedence over inorganic matter, and the intricacies of the human mind take even more precedence since the human intellect was sacred and necessary to understanding nature around it and reuniting with it. Various disciplines on the study of nature that were cultivated by Romanticism included: Schelling's Naturphilosophie; cosmology and cosmogony; developmental history of the earth and its creatures; the new science of biology; investigations of mental states, conscious and unconscious, normal and abnormal; experimental disciplines to uncover the hidden forces of nature – electricity, magnetism, galvanism and other life- forces; physiognomy, phrenology, meteorology, mineralogy, "philosophical" anatomy, among others.
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