Alexander Von Humboldt Galvanism Animal Electricity and Self Experimentation Part 2 The Electric Eel Animal Electricity and Later Years

Journal of the History of the Neurosciences
Basic and Clinical Perspectives
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Alexander von Humboldt: Galvanism, Animal

Electricity, and Self-Experimentation Part 2: The
Electric Eel, Animal Electricity, and Later Years
Stanley Finger , Marco Piccolino & Frank W. Stahnisch
To cite this article: Stanley Finger , Marco Piccolino & Frank W. Stahnisch (2013) Alexander
von Humboldt: Galvanism, Animal Electricity, and Self-Experimentation Part 2: The Electric Eel,
Animal Electricity, and Later Years, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 22:4, 327-352,
DOI: 10.1080/0964704X.2012.732728
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Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 22:327–352, 2013
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0964-704X print / 1744-5213 online
DOI: 10.1080/0964704X.2012.732728
Alexander von Humboldt: Galvanism, Animal

Electricity, and Self-Experimentation
Part 2: The Electric Eel, Animal Electricity,
and Later Years
STANLEY FINGER,1 MARCO PICCOLINO,2

AND FRANK W. STAHNISCH3
1
Department of Psychology, Programs in Neuroscience and Philosophy-
Neuroscience-Psychology, Washington University, Saint Louis, MO
2
Center of Neurosciences, Università di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
3
AMF/Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine and Health Care,
Departments of Community Health Sciences and History, The University of
Calgary, Calgary, Canada
After extensive experimentation during the 1790s, Alexander von Humboldt remained
skeptical about “animal electricity” (and metallic electricity), writing instead about an
ill-defined galvanic force. With his worldview and wishing to learn more, he studied
electric eels in South America just as the new century began, again using his body as
a scientific instrument in many of his experiments. As had been the case in the past
and for many of the same reasons, some of his findings with the electric eel (and soon
after, Italian torpedoes) seemed to argue against biological electricity. But he no longer
used galvanic terminology when describing his electric fish experiments. The fact that
he now wrote about animal electricity rather than a different “galvanic” force owed
much to Alessandro Volta, who had come forth with his “pile” (battery) for multi-
pling the physical and perceptable effects of otherwise weak electricity in 1800, while
Humboldt was deep in South America. Humboldt probably read about and saw voltaic
batteries in the United States in 1804, but the time he spent with Volta in 1805 was prob-
ably more significant in his conversion from a galvanic to an electrical framework for
understanding nerve and muscle physiology. Although he did not continue his animal
electricity research program after this time, Humboldt retained his worldview of a uni-
fied nature and continued to believe in intrinsic animal electricity. He also served as a
patron to some of the most important figures in the new field of electrophysiology (e.g.,
Hermann Helmholtz and Emil du Bois-Reymond), helping to take the research that he
had participated in to the next level.
Keywords Alexander von Humboldt, galvanism, animal electricity, Luigi Galvani,

Alessandro Volta, Aimé Bonpland, electric eel, torpedoes (electric rays), electric fishes,
self-experimentation, Hermann Helmholtz, Emil du Bois-Reymond
In the first part of this two-part article (see the previous issue of this journal), we examined
Alexander von Humboldt’s (1769–1859) formative years, his variant of Naturphilosophie,
Address correspondence to Stanley Finger, PhD, Department of Psychology, Programs in

Neuroscience and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Campus Box 1125, Washington University,
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA. E-mail: sfinger@wustl.edu
327
328 Stanley Finger et al.
and his extensive research on galvanism in the 1790s. We showed that, after thousands of
experiments, Humboldt found himself doubting the existence of animal electricity, writing
instead about an ill-defined galvanic force intrinsic to the nerves and muscles. In our con-
tinuation of this history, we shall first describe Humboldt’s electric eel experiments from
1800 and then what led him to change his mind and to frame his new findings in terms of
animal electricity, even though some of his findings with electric eels and then torpedo rays
captured in Italy were still negative (e.g., he did not see sparks or record the discharges on a
galvanometer). As we shall see, Humboldt’s worldview about a unified nature would con-
tinue to influence his research and thinking, but it would be Alessandro Volta’s battery and
his insights about weak electricity that would prove most influential in changing his mind.
South America
After completing his two volumes on galvanism (Humboldt, 1797), Humboldt planned
another trip to Italy. But the continuation of the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 prevented
him from doing so and hence from having access to the torpedo rays in Italy’s warmer
coastal waters. Discouraged, he headed to Paris in 1798, where he visited the museums,
attended scientific meetings, interacted with leading French scientists, and was asked to
advise an Académie commission investigating galvanism.1
It was at this time that he met Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (Figure 1), a botanist
trained in medicine. Like Humboldt, Bonpland had wanted to join Captain Nicolas Thomas
Figure 1. Aimé Goujaud “Bonpland” (1773–1858).
1
See the first part of this article for biographies and other references to Humboldt’s life.
Alexander von Humboldt 329
Baudin (1754–1803) on his voyage of circumnavigation of the globe. Disappointed when

the French could not come up with the 300,000 livres needed for the expedition because of
the wars, the two men headed to Marseilles, hoping to join the approximately 160 savants
following Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1761–1821) armies through North Africa. Had Humboldt
been able to make his way to Egypt, he might have been able to study the electric catfish
found in the Nile River, which had been depicted in a number of tombs dating back to Age
of Pyramids and the Old Kingdom (Finger & Piccolino, 2011, pp. 19–28).
Ever more frustrated, Humboldt and Bonpland now hiked for six weeks, from the
Mediterranean Coast across the Pyrenees Mountains to Madrid, arriving in the capital in
March 1799. There the Saxon ambassador and a patron of the sciences, Malte Gustav
Carl von Bose (1753–1809), recommended them to Don Mariano Luis de Uquijo y Muga
(1768–1817), the Foreign Minister, who helped to persuade Spanish King Charles IV
(1748–1819) to support their request to explore and to study his vast American territories.
Humboldt’s ability to converse in Spanish helped him win favor in the Spanish Court,
but he was informed that he would have to pay his own expenses and to provide the Spanish
government with needed information about New Spain, including how best to exploit its
mines and other riches, to be granted permission to travel to the Spanish colonies. He would
also be required to supply geological specimens to a Spanish museum as a part of the deal
(Archer, 2003).
On June 5, 1799, Humboldt and Bonpland, official documents in hand, set sail from
the Spanish harbor town of La Coruña on the frigate Pizarro, slipping past some British
warships blockading the coast. In a letter composed on the day of his departure to Karl-
Marie Ehrenbert Freiherr von Moll (1760–1838), Humboldt wrote optimistically about how
he would soon be collecting plants and fossils and making astronomical observations with
excellent instruments. But, he continues, this would not be the main purpose of his trip.
Thinking about the unity of nature, he informs the Austrian mineralogist (and Secretary of
the Academy of Sciences of Munich) that the framework for his research endeavors will
be “the harmony of concurrent forces, and the influence of inanimate world on animal and
vegetal life” (trans. from Hamy, 1905, p. 18).2
After a stop in Tenerife, he and Bonpland left their vessel on July 16, 1799 in Cumaná,
today a city in Venezuela but then a part of the Spanish Crown Colony of New Granada.3 On
the very day he landed, Humboldt wrote excitedly to his brother Wilhelm von Humboldt
(1767–1835), telling him that they were now in a very divine and rich country, one with
“marvelous plants, gymnotes [electric eels], armadillos, monkeys, parrots; and semi-wild
Indians, a very beautiful and interesting race” (trans. from Hamy, 1905, p. 25).
After several months in Cumaná and Caracas, the explorers packed and began their
expedition of the Orinoco River system. They hoped, among other things, to learn more
about the Casiquiare Canal, the alleged connection between the Orinoco and Rio Negro
(really Amazon) waterways, the source of the Orinoco River, and the plant and animal
2
As in Part 1 of this article, unless otherwise specified, the authors are responsible for all transla-
tions unless otherwise specified. For more on Humboldt’s views about the unity of nature, see Part 1
of this article.
3
Cumaná, in the Province of New Andalusia, was first colonized in 1521 and became an impor-
tant place for trading and shipping. This port had not been their intended point for disembarkation,
but an epidemic, seemingly of typhoid, had broken out on ship in July. The ship’s captain quickly
headed for the nearest harbor, which, given the Pizarro ’s location, meant north Atlantic Coast of
South America. Humboldt and Bonpland were unaffected. Had this not happened, they probably
would have started their explorations of the Spanish colonies in Havana or Mexico (Kraay, 2005,
pp. 85–95).
life in this region. This part of their trip began early in February 1800. Laborers and
pack animals hauled their belongings and supplies, among which were 42 state-of-the-art
scientific instruments, each in a velvet-lined box.
These boxes included a number of electrical instruments. “I had brought with me elec-
trometers mounted with straw, pith-balls, and gold-leaf; also a small Leyden jar which
could be charged by friction,” Humboldt tells his readers in the multivolume narrative of
his journey to the New World (trans. in Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 13).
His Voyage aux Régions Équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (Humboldt & Bonpland,
1811–1833) first appeared in French but was translated into various languages, including
German (Reise in die Aequinoctial-Gegenden des neuen Continents) and English (Personal
Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the Years
1799–1804) in his lifetime.4
Having conducted extensive galvanic research in Europe, Humboldt was especially
eager to use his instruments to study the so-called “electric eels” found in the swamps,
streams, and pools of the vast tropical river plains called the llanos, which they reached
about a month later. Nevertheless, he now faced some unexpected problems in this swel-
tering, mosquito-infested part of the world. One was that the slimy, unattractive creatures
tended to disperse this time of year, making them hard to find; another was that the natives,
who could prove helpful, were terrified of their painful, immobilizing shocks and well-
known killing abilities. As a result, he was able to obtain only a single, enfeebled specimen
in Calabozo, a cattle-trading station, necessitating moving on to the town of Rastro de
Abaxo. There the natives took them to a site called Caño de Bera, where they were told the
eels congregated in the muddy water during the dry season.
Humboldt’s description of how the local Indians drove some 30 horses and mules
into the water to draw the eels out of the mud and send them into a shocking frenzy that
resulted in the deaths (possibly by drowning) of several pack animals is, as noted in the first
part of this article, legendary. But what happened on the nineteenth of March 1800 is still
worth conveying, because what the natives called embarbascar con caballos (stupefying
with horses) illustrates why this section of Humboldt’s narrative, more than any other, so
captured the public imagination that it was reprinted or summarized in an enormous number
of books and articles (e.g., Humboldt, 1820).
The eels, stunned by the noise, defend themselves by the repeated discharge
of their electric batteries. For a long interval they seem likely to prove victo-
rious. Several horses sink beneath the violence of the invisible strokes, which
they receive from all sides, in organs the most essential to life; and stunned by
the force and frequency of the shocks, they disappear under the water. Others,
panting, with mane erect, and haggard eyes expressing anguish and dismay,
raise themselves, and endeavor to flee from the storm by which they are over-
taken. They are driven back by the Indians into the middle of the water; but a
small number succeed in eluding the active vigilance of the fishermen. These
regain the shore, stumbling at every step, and stretch themselves on the sand,
4
Two English editions of Humboldt’s narrative appeared during his lifetime. Helen Maria
William’s translation was first published in London in 1814 and in Philadelphia a year later, and
Thomasina Ross’s translation came in 1852 and was reprinted in 1971. Although there are some dif-
ferences between the French and the English editions, since the English coveys the essentials of the
story and the flavor of Humboldt’s writing, we shall continue to quote from the 1971 Ross edition,
rather than translating anew.
exhausted with fatigue, and with limbs benumbed by the electric shocks of the
gymnoti. (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 115)
With the pack animals as “bait,” the Indians, who had positioned themselves by and
above the pool (on overhanging tree limbs), used harpoons fastened to dry cords to obtain
a number of the freshwater trembladores without wounding them too severely or having to
endure their wrath. The largest measured over 5 feet (about 1.5 meters) in length. In more
recent times, scientists have determined that eels of this size can deliver repeated jolts of
about 700 volts (see, for example, Noonan et al., 2003).
March 19, 1800 must be considered a significant day in the history of electricity. This
was not only the day Humboldt began his research on the eels at Caño de Bera. It is also
the very day that Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), confined to his native town of Como near
Lago Maggiore in Northern Italy because of the Napoleonic Wars, was busy composing his
famous letter describing his new electric battery (Volta, 1800; Figure 2). Penned in French,
he would address it to Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), President of the Royal Society of
London (whom Humboldt had visited while still a student), on the next day. He would call
this invention his “organe électriques artificiel” to make it clear that he had been inspired
by earlier research on the structure and function of the shocking organs in various electric
fishes, especially the electric eel and torpedo rays.
Figure 2. A part of Volta’s (1800) letter to Joseph Banks describing and illustrating his pile (color
figure available online).
Figure 3. An illustration from Humboldt’s book on his travels to the Americas showing a cross-
section of the electric eel in the lower right (its electric organs are in the upper part of this image).
The elongated knifefish shown horizontally at the top of the plate is not an electric eel (color figure
available online).
Humboldt made both dissections and physiological experiments on his captured eels
(Figure 3), some of which again involved subjecting his own body to pain. He would present
the results of these experiments to the French Institut on October 20, 1806, one year after his
return to Europe. He would then publish them in various scientific journals (e.g., Humboldt,
1807, 1819), in various editions of his Voyage, and in other venues. The account that he
would give of the results of his experiments and especially the conclusions he derived from
them, however, would not reflect what he was thinking when he studied live eels in the wild
with Bonpland (see below).
A short but significant echo of Humboldt’s first impressions emerges from a letter he
mailed a few months later, on October 16, 1800, from Cumaná. It was sent to Antoine-
François Fourcroy (1755–1809), a chemist and physician who had been active in the
organizing the sciences, founding medical schools, and establishing scientific societies in
France. Humboldt and Fourcroy had been in contact since the 1790s, when Humboldt was
engaged in his galvanic experiments. At that time, Fourcroy opined that the young baron
worked with little reserve and almost boyish enthusiasm. Writing in French, a still ener-
getic Humboldt (Figure 4) now told his correspondent: “We have collected insects, sea
shells, woods for dying; we have done dissections of crocodiles, of manatees, of monkeys,
of Gymnotus electricus (in which the fluid is absolutely galvanic and not electrical), and
described many kinds of serpents, lizards, and fishes” (trans. from Roquette, 1867, p. 103,
emphasis added).
Thus, at the time of this letter and seemingly for some time thereafter, Humboldt was
convinced that he had it right in the Versuche. That is, the evidence he had collected and
333
Figure 4. On the left: Friedrich Georg Weitsch’s (1758–1828) portrait of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), made in 1806, one year after he published his
Italian torpedo experiments (Humboldt & Gay-Lussac, 1805). On the right: the last page of a letter describing the torpedo experiments, sent from Naples on
August 14, 1805 to French chemist Jacques Thenard (1777–1857), an academician and friend of Gay-Lussac, who worked with Humboldt on these experiments
(From the archives of the Paris Académie des Sciences) (color figure available online).
had considered critical in the 1790s for the galvanic nature of the animal force was still
“absolutely” favoring this explanation rather than electricity. In the narrative he would pub-
lish several years later, however, his stance would radically change, and for good reason,
as we soon shall see. But before turning to Humboldt’s “paradigm shift,” let us first survey
what he wrote in his narrative about the eels, the experiments he conducted, and how the
shocks felt to him.
Humboldt’s Eel Experiments

Humboldt’s dissections confirmed that the eel’s shocking organs are huge, taking up more
than two thirds of its body. As for its fear-inducing shocks, they were experienced both by
accident and in a number of planned experiments. He tells his readers:
If by chance a stroke be received before the fish is wounded or wearied by long

pursuit, the pain and numbness are so violent that it is impossible to describe
the nature of the feeling they excite. I do not remember having ever received
from the discharge of a large Leyden jar a more dreadful shock than that which
I experienced by imprudently placing my feet on a gymnotus just taken out
of the water. I was affected during the rest of the day with a violent pain in
the knees, and in almost every joint. . . . We seem to feel, at every stroke, an
internal vibration, which lasts two or three seconds, and is followed by a painful
numbness. (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 118)
A few paragraphs later, when discussing how electric fishes had long been used for
treating paralyses, headaches, gout, and other ailments, he describes what he and Bonpland
endured to determine if some of these medical claims might have some validity. “I can
assert that, having made experiments during four hours successively with gymnoti,” he
writes, “M. Bonpland and myself felt, till the next day, a debility in the muscles, a pain in
the joints, and a general uneasiness, the effect of a strong irritation of the nervous system”
(Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 119).
Elsewhere Humboldt directly compares the shocks to what he had endured in some of
the galvanic experiments he had conducted a few years earlier. He mentions, for instance,
the very painful experiments he had earlier pursued on his deliberately blistered back,
adding: “The sensation caused by the feeble shocks of an electric eel appeared to me
analogous to that painful twitching with which I have been seized at each contact of two het-
erogeneous metals applied to wounds that I had made on my back by means of cantharides”
(Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 119).
As we had noted in the first part of this article, Humboldt had considered the type
of sensation produced by heterogeneous metals as evidence against true electricity when
writing his Versuche. In part for this reason, he continued to utilize his own body like a
research instrument, even comparing the sensations produced by an electric fish to those
from a discharging Leyden jar.5
Additionally, his body was employed as a kind of mediating instrument in other exper-
iments; for example, when he wanted to determine if an eel’s shocks could pass through
5
This Leyden jar or bottle for storing electricity and then releasing it on demand was accidently
invented by Leyden physicist Pieter van Muschenbroek (1692–1761) and by Pommeranian cleric
Ewald Georg von Kleist (1700–1748) in the mid-1740s (see Dorsman & Grommelin, 1957). For
more on how it shaped electric fish experimentation, see Finger and Piccolino (2011).
it, as would be expected from a known conductor of electricity. Thus, he joined hands with
Bonpland and others, witnessing firsthand that several people forming a chain or a circuit
with an eel would feel the painful shocks at about the same time—just as had been true
when an artificial chain was created using different test animals, a finding he described in a
letter to Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler (1751–1795) in Jena on April 18, 1795.
The aforementioned experiment also shows how Humboldt tried to extend his obser-
vations from the artificial settings of his various workplaces and laboratories to the more
natural world. In 1795, he wrote:
It is possible to connect the nerves [experimentally] of warm- and cold-blooded

animals, such as frogs and mice, so that the pieces [of the nerves and muscles]
are exchanged in a way that they remain connected. . . . This experiment always
turns out successfully [der Versuch gelingt immer] when a silver clamp touches
both a piece of zinc and the muscle. As it turns out, other animal substances,
such as a fleshy piece of muscle, some boiled meat, or the uterus of a mouse
are equally well suited to repair a nerve [kann man einen Nerven flicken]. Even
a long tail of a mouse conducted the electricity after all its hair was cut. (trans.
from Jahn & Lange, 1973, p. 418)
As was true of what he did in Europe during the 1790s, however, not all of his South
American experiments involved his own body. He also used frogs, turtles, and other ani-
mals as sensitive, biological electrometers. These studies, like those utilizing his own body,
confirmed that an eel’s shocks could be transmitted through metal rods and wires, but not
through glass, wax, and dry woods — the usual conductors and nonconductors in electrical
experiments.
In one of his more “violent” experiments, he separated an eel’s electrical organs from
its brain and wrote that its shocks ceased immediately. This finding, like many of his other
findings, supported observations made by other scientists on torpedoes, including those of
Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799; 1783) and Luigi Galvani (1737–1798; Galvani, 1797).
Also like others, Humboldt emphasized that the release of a shock is a deliberate act—
that is, rather than a simple discharge of an electrically charged device—it was definitely
a physiological action that could be initiated or withheld at will, or one that could be used
for instinctive or reflexive actions.
Many of Humboldt’s findings stacked up against the possibility that the eel’s shocks
are true electricity. Along with John Walsh (1725–1795) before him, he was unable to detect
the discharges with pith balls or other manmade electrometers. Further, he never witnessed
a telltale spark during a discharge, although Walsh had been able to do this repeatedly with
an electric eel (Finger & Piccolino, 2011, pp. 281–287; Piccolino & Bresadola, 2003a).
Even more notably, he found that the discharge would not pass through “very dry wood,
horn, and even bones,” which were believed to good conductors of electricity, or a small
flame (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 123). Humboldt, as noted in the
first part of this article, had conducted research showing that genuine electricity could be
transmitted through small pieces of bone, coal, charcoal, bituminous coal, and graphite
(Humboldt, 1797, vol. 1, p. 125). These were among the findings that had led him to write
about a “galvanic force” in his earlier nerve and muscle experiments, as opposed to true
electricity.
When completing the electric eel passages for his narrative, Humboldt wrote: “Though
in the present state of our knowledge we may flatter ourselves with having thrown some
light on the extraordinary effects of electric fishes, yet a vast number of physical and phys-
iological researches still remain to be made” (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2,
p. 130). Being modest by nature and clearly not wanting to appear dogmatic, he was in
effect acknowledging that the electrical fish force demanded more experimentation—given
his worldview, more research that he believed would also shed light on other living bodies.
From the New World to Italy

Humboldt left the llanos on March 27, 1800, setting forth on considerably more dangerous
explorations of South America, taking copious notes, and collecting specimens at every
location.6 After an adventurous time trekking through the jungles, navigating the water-
ways, and climbing the peaks in South America, he spent a full year in Mexico (March,
1803–1804), and then he visited the new United States. He returned to Europe in 1804,
landing at Bordeaux and then hurrying off to Paris to meet with other scientists, some
believing from erroneous newspaper articles that the daring German baron had died far
from home.
Although now showered with honors of every sort, Humboldt still felt a strong need
to learn even more about the electric fish force: “After the experiments I had made on
gymnoti,” he wrote, “it became interesting to me, on my return to Europe, to ascertain with
precision the various circumstances in which another electric fish, the torpedo of our seas,
gives or does not give shocks” (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 125).
This quest for additional knowledge led Humboldt back to Italy in 1805, his trip there
also having other objectives.7 To his delight, he was able to obtain some torpedoes for
experimentation. But of far more significance, this trip also provided him with the opportu-
nity to discuss electric fish and metal discharges with Volta before sending the narrative of
his voyage to the Americas, as well as several journal articles describing his experiences,
to various presses (Dassow Walls, 2009, pp. 84–98).
Humboldt conducted his torpedoes experiments with Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
(1778–1850; Figure 5), a brilliant chemist affiliated with the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle
and the École Polytechnique in Paris (Crosland, 1978). The two scientists had met near
Paris in 1804, and their work had revealed that the relative composition of the Earth’s
atmosphere does not change with increasing altitude, and that water is composed of two
parts oxygen and one part hydrogen.8 Leopold von Buch (1774–1853), a geologist from
6
Humboldt even entertained the idea of floating down the Amazon to the Atlantic coast in Brazil
but did not do this. He seemed unaware that the suspicious Brazilian government had issued a war-
rant for his arrest, because of his criticisms of how the native peoples were being treated in this
territory. Instead, he explored more of the Upper Orinoco region, including the natural 200-mile-long
Casiquiare Canal connecting the Rio Orinoco with the Rio Negro, before making his way back to
Cumaná in August. He and Bonpland had collected some 12,000 specimens along the way, estimat-
ing this was just a tenth of what they had seen. They were dismayed to find, however, that insects and
humidity quickly destroyed a third of their massive collection. They also learned how the Indians
manufactured paralyzing curare from harmless liana for their arrow tips, a subject about which
Westerners knew very little and were eager to learn more (Tracy & Hanigan, 1997, pp. 220–221).
7
One of his many reasons for going to Italy was to see his brother Wilhelm, who since the
end of 1802 had been living in Rome as Prussian Minister to the Papal Court. Another was to study
Mount Vesuvius, which was unstable and threatening to erupt again. Humboldt would return to Mount
Vesuvius in 1823, along with his benefactor, King Frederick William III of Prussia (1770–1840).
8
Gay-Lussac made many other important contributions to science, the best known of which are
his discoveries of the elements boron and iode (iodine), and the two laws of Gay-Lussac, which deal
with the chemistry and physics of gasses (Lesch, 1984, pp. 138–162). Humboldt first met Gay-Lussac
Figure 5. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850).
Humboldt’s Freiberg days, was present in Naples at the time of the torpedo experiments
and served as a witness. Humboldt would allude to some of these experiments in his New
World narrative, after describing them more fully in an article published in French in 1805
(Humboldt & Gay-Lussac, 1805) and in a German publication two years later (Humboldt,
1807).
Many of the torpedo experiments, like those on the South American eel, again called
for putting the experimenter’s body in the circuit. For example, Humboldt and Gay-Lussac
tried to determine whether they could detect the torpedo’s shock, which is much weaker
than that of an eel, in ways other than by pressing one hand on the top and the other on the
underside of the fish. They found that they could better appreciate the shocks after a torpedo
was removed from the water, and that direct touch with one finger still enabled them to feel
the discharge. Translating from their 1805 publication, we read, “no shock is felt when a
conducting body, for instance a metal, is interposed between the finger and organ of the fish
. . . the animal may be touched with impunity with a key or any other metallic instrument”
at a party thrown by French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet (1748–1822). He had just completed a
balloon ascent of over 23,000 feet, beating Humboldt’s earlier altitude record of 19,286 feet, achieved
while climbing Mount Chimborazo in what is now Ecuador.
(Humboldt & Gay-Lussac, 1805, p. 18).9 A flame in the circuit also blocked the shocks
from being felt. This negative finding seemed more expected, since Humboldt had not been
able to accomplish this feat with his more powerful eels. On a more positive note, the
torpedo shocks could be felt with two hands pressing metal plates, one under and one on
top of a fish.
Thus, many of Humboldt and Gay-Lussac’s other experiments were negative, some
probably because they studied weak torpedoes and others because of the limitations of
their physical instruments. Not surprisingly, they did not detect any fish electricity with
their electrometers and were unable to see any sparks. In brief, Humboldt again obtained
some findings that he could have interpreted as favoring a galvanic force and not genuine
electricity.
Volta, his Battery, and Humboldt

Volta, as mentioned, invented his pile or battery four years before Humboldt returned from
South America and five years before the two scientists met in Italy, where Humboldt con-
ducted his torpedo experiments (Volta, 1800). Volta’s device multiplied the otherwise weak
electricity generated from different metals, making it stronger, more perceptible, of greater
use, and easier to study. This wondrous instrument (Figure 6) was already transforming
physics, and it secured his reputation as the brilliant scientist who knew more about weak
electricity from different sources than anyone else.
Figure 6. An early voltaic pile or battery (color figure available online).
9
This surprising observation, which seems in opposition to the finding of Walsh and others show-
ing the conductivity of torpedo shock by metals, can be accounted for by the weakness of the fish used
by Humboldt and Gay-Lussac and, also, in some circumstances, by the shunting effect of metal with
respect to the body of the experimenter.
While in the jungles of South America, Alexander von Humboldt almost assuredly
would not have been aware of Volta’s great achievement and its implications. “I could
not possibly have been placed in circumstances more highly favourable for study and for
purposes of exploration than those which I now enjoy,” he wrote to his brother Wilhelm in
October 1800, adding: “The only drawback to this solitude is the want of information as to
the progress that scientific discovery is making in Europe, and the loss of all the advantages
arising from the interchange of thought” (trans. in Bruhns, 1873, vol. 2, p. 276).
Some of this isolation was due to the fact that the British Navy was blockading Spanish
ports around the world, coinciding with the Napoléon’s conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
This action limited communications and trade to and from the Spanish lands. Humboldt
guessed that no more than 25% of his letters reached their destinations, and he received
very few letters from Europe while in the Spanish colonies.10
What seems clear from Humboldt’s surviving letters is that his views about the eel had
not changed by the end of 1800. For example, in a letter dated December 23 to Manuel
Guevara Vasconcellos (1739–1807), Captaine Général de Venezuela, which was probably
written in Spanish before being translated into French, we read:
On the plains of l’Apure, we have made very intriguing experiments on the

force of the gymnotes (trembladores), of which six or seven have killed two
horses in a few minutes. The results of these experiments have been very new
and contrary to what has been believed until now in Europe, due the scarcity
of good instruments introduced into these Indies. This fish (pescado) is not
charged by electricity, but with that galvanic fluid of which I have spoken many
times and have described in my work on the nerves and on the vital principles.
(Roquette, 1867, p. 21, trans. and italics ours)
Despite the difficulty of communications, the possibility still has to be raised that
Humboldt learned about Volta’s battery before he sailed back to Europe. This seems likely
because he had better access to information when he visited Mexico and the United States.
In Mexico City, a metropolis of 150,000 inhabitants, he met with other scientists and visited
libraries, having been granted access to the public archives.11
Upon leaving Mexico, and after a brief stop in Cuba, Humboldt sailed on to
Philadelphia for a 10-day first stop (he would return to Europe after a second stay in
Philadelphia, one lasting three weeks). Philadelphia was then the largest city in the United
States, although half the size of Mexico City at the time. American and visiting scientists
tended to congregate in Philadelphia, where they had access to the best scientific resources
in the young country (e.g., colleges, research collections, instruments, academic libraries),
as well as like minds.
Painter Charles Wilson Peale (1741–1827), who loved science and had his own
museum, greeted Humboldt and showed him around. Notably, he also oversaw the
10
It took Humboldt three years to learn that some of the manuscripts he had sent from Cuba early
in 1801 had actually made it to his brother in Paris. This discovery was not made by a return letter,
but while perusing a scientific journal in Philadelphia (Dasso Walls, 2009, pp. 99–106).
11
Humboldt befriended local viceroy, José Joaquín Vicente de Iturrigaray y Aróstegui
(1742–1815), who allowed him to make use of archives otherwise unavailable to foreigners. Mexico
City boasted a mining academy founded 13 years earlier with an extensive library and equipment, and
Humboldt had become friends with its director, Andrés Manuel del Río (1764–1849), the discoverer
of vanadium, when both men were in Freiberg (Saxony) (Dasso Walls, 2009, pp. 2–40).
American Philosophical Society’s library.12 While at Philosophic Hall, Humboldt would

have had access to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, the
widely disseminated journal in which Volta presented and illustrated his organe électrique
artificiel or battery while Humboldt was in South America.13 Humboldt might also have
seen some Voltaic batteries here and in private collections. We know that the talk he gave
to members of the American Philosophical Society about his travels was so well received
that he was made an honorary member and treated as a celebrity — and that other doors
and collectors’ cabinets were opened to him.14
Humboldt’s next stop was tiny Washington, DC, the new capital that then housed just
5,000 people and had only 800 buildings, not counting those like the Capital and Executive
Mansion that were in various stages of construction. Here, he spent two weeks in June
with leading American politicians and other citizens. Some, however, were highly informed
when it came to the sciences and new inventions.
One such person was Peale’s friend, President Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), who
was an avid science book collector, loved new instruments and had provided the founda-
tion collection for the Library of Congress, which Humboldt visited.15 In 1780, Jefferson
had become a member of the American Philosophical Society and had been its president
since 1797. He was well acquainted with the writing of Blumenbach, Humboldt’s for-
mer teacher, as well as with those of other European science writers. Through Jefferson,
Humboldt would again have had access to the latest science books and journals, includ-
ing the Philosophical Transactions, and to other men who enjoyed talking about the latest
instruments and the newest scientific discoveries, while in what was then a very small city
(Dassow Walls, 2009, pp. 100–115).
Yet more than any of Humboldt’s own experiments, and more than any other scientist
he might have met in the Americas, one has the distinct impression that Humboldt’s visit to
Volta in 1805 — with their conversations and most likely demonstrations of his batteries—
did the most to convince the German baron that the galvanic force intrinsic to animals is,
in fact, true electricity, just as is true for the metallic force that he had also looked upon as
different from electricity.16 Oddly, most historians of physiology and of science in general
have largely overlooked Humboldt’s debt to Volta in formulating his newer physiological
thoughts.17
12
This society was cofounded by Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) in 1743.
13
Although written in French, Volta’s (1800) published letter bore an English title: “On the
Electricity Excited by the Mere Contact of Conducting Substances of Different Species.”
14
American physician Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) was particularly interested in what
Humboldt had learned about cinchona bark, which was being used to treat malaria and other febrile
disorders at the time (Dasso Walls, 2009, pp. 105–156).
15
Humboldt and Jefferson met almost every day, and Jefferson went out of his way to introduce
Humboldt to other men of science. Both men embraced democratic ideals and they remained lifelong
friends (see Schoenwaldt, 1987).
16
Unlike Humboldt, a considerable number of his contemporaries remained reluctant to accept
Volta’s metallic electricity as genuine electricity. Among the reasons for this were that it was difficult
generate sparks or sounds with the early Voltaic piles. Also, the pile released streams of electricity
that did not easily move pith balls or other light bodies that could be activated by known sources
of “genuine” electricity. Still another factor was that the pile and the Leyden jar did not always
have identical physiological effects. These differences reflected the fact that both Voltaic batteries
and electric fishes produce intense electric currents at relatively low tensions (i.e., generate small
electrical potentials).
17
Two exceptions are Rothschuh (1973, pp. 156–165) and Finger and Piccolino (2011,
pp. 339–341).
Electricity, not Galvanism

When Humboldt wrote up the eel encounter for the 1811 volume of his New World
narrative18 and for other publications (e.g., Humboldt, 1806, 1807, 1808, 1819, 1826,
1849a, 1849b), as well as when he described the torpedo experiments he conducted off
Naples (Humboldt & Gay-Lussac, 1805), he no longer referred to an ill-defined galvanic
force that only superficially resembled true electricity. Instead, he wrote about fish (and
metallic) electricity, repeatedly paying homage to Volta and often mentioning his battery,
about which, as stated, he could have known nothing while conducting his eel experiments.
For example, when describing the eel’s skin, he tells his readers that it “is covered with
a mucous matter, which, as Volta has proved, conducts electricity twenty or thirty times
better than pure water” (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 118). And in the part
of his narrative where he described the pain he experienced after touching a vigorous eel,
we find: “To be aware of the difference that exists between the sensation produced by the
Voltaic battery and an electric fish, the latter should be touched when they are in a state of
extreme weakness” (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 118; emphasis added).
Later on, he writes: “We cannot discharge at will either a torpedo or a gymnotus, as we
discharge at will a Leyden jar or a Voltaic battery” (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971,
vol. 2, p. 126, emphasis added).
Of special relevance for our story, after comparing the pain caused by an eel with the
pain he had felt when experimenting on his blistered shoulders in the 1790s, he tells his
readers:
This difference of sensation between the effects of electric fishes and those
of a Voltaic battery or a Leyden jar feebly-charged has struck every observer;
there is, however, nothing in this contrary to the supposition of the identity of
electricity and the galvanic action of fishes. The electricity may be the same;
but its effects will be variously modified by the disposition of the electrical
apparatus, by the intensity of the fluid, by the rapidity of the current, and by the
particular mode of action. (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 119,
emphasis added)
As noted above, the differences in sensations caused by electrical and galvanic stimuli
had been a key factor behind his conclusion in the Versuche that galvanism could not be
identified with genuine electricity.
Another paragraph in his narrative, in which the battery is again mentioned, is at least
equally informative:
18
It took Humboldt a long time to publish all of his New World findings, and he used the remain-
der of his once very sizeable inheritance to do so. The first volume based on the expedition appeared
in 1805 and dealt with the geography of plants. Bonpland, who did not like deskwork, was just one
of the scientists who worked with him on it and with the other volumes. The complete set of books
was so expensive that few individuals could afford it, and sales fell far short of once lofty expecta-
tions. Even Humboldt lacked a complete set of these books in his large personal library in Berlin.
Nevertheless, many research and state libraries in Europe and North America bought the set as a
major reference work in natural philosophy and natural history, and they became widely used and
extensively cited. Interestingly, Humboldt first planned to dedicate the series to Schiller, not knowing
how antagonistic Schiller still remained toward him, but this came to pass after he learned that this
great figure of the Romantic Era had died in 1805 (Uhlig, 2004, pp. 239–248).
The action of the fish on human organs is transmitted and intercepted by the
same bodies that transmit and intercept the electrical current of a conductor
charged by a Leyden jar, or Voltaic battery. Some anomalies, which we thought
we observed, are easily explained, when we recollect that even metals (as is
proved from their ignition when exposed to the action of a battery) present a
slight obstacle to the passage of electricity; and that a bad conductor annihilates
the effect, on our organs, of a feeble electric charge, whilst it transmits to us the
effect of a very strong one. (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 122)
After considering some circumstances in which even relatively good conductors can
block the physiological effects produced by a weak current, Humboldt continues in a way
that Volta would have appreciated:
These effects are, however, dependent on three variable circumstances; the

energy of the electromotive apparatus, the conductibility of the medium, and
the irritability of the organs which receive the impressions: it is because exper-
iments have not been sufficiently multiplied with a view to these three variable
elements, that, in the action of electric eels and torpedoes, accidental circum-
stances have been taken for absolute conditions, without which the electric
shocks are not felt. (Humboldt & Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 123)
Still, and with characteristic humility, he also writes: “We are, doubtless, very far from
having discovered all the secrets of the electrical action of fishes which is modified by the
influence of the brain and the nerves; but the experiments we have just described are suffi-
cient to prove that these fishes act by concealed electricity, and by electromotive organs
of a particular construction, which are recharged with extreme rapidity” (Humboldt &
Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 128; emphasis added).
Although, we have contended that Volta played a major role in changing Humboldt’s
mind about electric fishes, we should point out that the two men might have been in less-
than-perfect agreement about the physiology of other animals. In 1794, during the hot phase
of his controversy with Galvani, who had anonymously published some experiments in
which he obtained muscle contractions without metals, Volta had begun to theorize that true
electricity could be produced via contacts of various types of heterogeneous materials—
even those of a nonmetallic nature. Notably, he was soon able to produce electricity by
bringing two liquid solutions (acid, alkalis of salt solutions) in contact, although the effi-
cacy of these liquid combinations appeared to be substantially smaller than with his paired
metals (see Piccolino & Bresadola, 2003b, in press).
But in the absence of hard data from worthy experiments, Volta had continued to
criticize Galvani and his followers for not being able to prove to his satisfaction that elec-
tricity exists in an unbalanced state within animal tissues. He continued to look upon even
Galvani’s well-crafted experiments with a single metal or no metals at all as method-
ologically flawed for one reason or another. Furthermore, since 1796, he had been able
to demonstrate metallic electricity with physical instruments, whereas Galvani, his asso-
ciates, and his supporters had never been able to measure animal electricity with any kind
of electrometer.19
19
Physical instruments for measuring the electricity of torpedoes would begin to appear a few
years after Volta’s death in 1827. Nevertheless, the first unequivocal measurement of electricity in the
muscles of a nonelectric fish was not obtained until 1843 (Matteucci, 1843, 1844).
Volta nevertheless continued to believe that even relatively strong electricity could be
produced by the contact of nonmetallic conductors, and he was convinced that electric
fishes produce their strong electrical shocks in this way. Their organs are both visually and
functionally similar to the new electric batteries he had developed, even though they do not
contain any metals.
In a memoir published in 1801, one year after the invention of his battery, and after
saying that, until then, he had been unable to produce strong shocks with a battery made
from pure liquid conductors (“second class conductors” in his terminology), Volta wrote:
Nonetheless, if not with art [artifice], nature has found the way to succeed, in
that the organs of the torpedo, trembling eel (Gymnotus electricus), etc., are
made up only of conductors of this second class, i.e., humid, without any of the
first class, i.e., without metals; and perhaps we are not that far from when art
could also succeed. (Volta, 1923, p. 62)
As for Humboldt, although he might have felt that all of nature is unified, he did not
come out and state in a direct way at this moment in time that the nerve and muscle force
in all animals (i.e., more than some specialized fishes) must also be electrical. More specif-
ically, this sort of claim is not found in the narrative of his trip to the New World or in his
papers on the Italian torpedoes. One reason for this is that he, as a good scientist, might
have wished to tread carefully from the facts at hand. Another, not to be overlooked, is that
he might have wanted to be respectful to Volta, who was still not convinced and from whom
he had obviously learned so much.
A few lines in the fish part of his New World narrative are, however, of considerable
interest in this context. First, in the introduction to the eel section, Humboldt seems to hint
at how a more unified picture was forming in his mind, while praising Volta for opening
his eyes to physiological electricity. He writes that it was Volta, who “by the force of his
genius and an unrivalled sagacity, unveiled the mystery under which the Galvanic phe-
nomena remained enveloped for many years” (trans. in Finger and Piccolino, 2011, p. 339,
from Humboldt & Bonpland, 1811–1833, p. 49, emphasis added). Here, with grace, dig-
nity, and diplomacy, Humboldt could well have been hinting or suggesting that he believed
that Volta’s findings with different metals had implications that went well beyond just the
electric fishes he would soon be discussing.
Then, at the end of the eel section, Humboldt returned to the possible electrical actions
of heterogeneous substances, which, as stated, Volta was now studying and certainly con-
sidering. Here he writes not about the present but about a time in the future when the
facts might become clearer. With carefully selected words, he tells us: “It will perhaps
be found that, in most animals, every contraction of the muscular fibre is preceded by a
discharge from the nerve into the muscle; and that the mere simple contact of heteroge-
neous substances is a source of movement and of life in all organized beings” (Humboldt
& Bonpland, 1852/1971, vol. 2, p. 131, emphasis added).
In closing this section, it is also important to draw attention to what Humboldt would
later write in his Ansichten der Natur. This book of beautifully painted landscapes and
scientific progress was Humboldt’s personal favorite, and, in 1808, it included three lec-
tures he had given at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. He added an additional
essay and notes in 1826, and two more essays with updated notes in 1849, this last edition
becoming an international bestseller.
In all three editions, Humboldt briefly describes his experiences with the electric eel,
without discussing the details of his own experiments. With memorable prose, he writes
that “in these regions, electric fire breaks forth from the bosom of the waters.” He follows
these words with a truncated (but now seemingly mandatory) description of how the eels
had been captured with horses and mules (e.g., Humboldt, 1849b, p. 23). It is now that he
addresses, “That which forms the invisible but living weapon of this electric eel; that which,
awakened by the contact of moist dissimilar particles, circulates though all the organs of
plants and animals” (Humboldt, 1849b, p. 23).
Further, in the last edition of his Ansichten der Natur, we also find this footnote:
In all parts of organic bodies dissimilar substances are in contact with each
other: in all, solids are associated with fluids. Thus, wherever there is organiza-
tion and life, there is also electric tension or the play of the voltaic pile, as the
experiments of Nobili20 and Matteucci,21 and especially the latest admirable
labours of Emil du Bois[-Reymond]22 teach us. (Humboldt, 1849b, p. 187)
Thus, Humboldt, now approaching his eightieth birthday, was still thinking that dis-
similar substances, even if not metallic, could produce electricity. Interestingly, he goes on
to describe some of du Bois-Reymond’s new experiments in this same footnote, writing
that he witnessed them and was pleased to see how what he had once studied with great
passion has now evolved. In his preceding footnote, which is also of interest, he had joyfully
remarked that he and Gay-Lussac had been able to do experiments on a living Gymnotus
that had survived the voyage to Paris.
Electrophysiology’s Patron
Although Humboldt did not personally develop and pursue a significant neurophysiological
research program of his own after he returned from South America, only conducting a few
rather insignificant experiments with Gay-Lussac on Italian torpedoes in 1805, he continued
to find electric fishes fascinating, even quite late in life. Similarly, he was intrigued by new
developments with other animals, keeping up with the literature showing that they too are
electrical.
In a letter sent on October 25, 1837 to his correspondent Dominique François
Jean Arago (1786–1853), perpetual secretary of France’s Académie des Sciences, he
praised Carlo Matteucci’s new research on electric fishes. Matteucci and Santi Linari
(1777–1858) had recently witnessed sparks with torpedoes caught in Italy, and Matteucci
had been able to localize the nervous centers responsible for controlling the shocks.23 Two
years later, Humboldt sent a letter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany recommending Matteucci
for a professorship in Pisa. In 1843, while in Pisa, Matteucci provided the first measure-
ments of animal electricity in the muscles of ordinary animals using a physical device
(Finger & Piccolino, 2011, pp. 365–368; Matteucci, 1843, 1844; Moruzzi, 1964, 1996;
Piccolino, 2012). He would replicate his experiment with “frog piles” before the French
Académie with Humboldt, who had supported him, in attendance (Piccolino & Wade,
2012).
20
Leopoldo Nobili (1784–1835).
21
Carlo Matteucci (1811–1868).
22
Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896).
23
Matteucci first reported both Linari’s and his own torpedo experiments to the French
Académie, after which these two scientists fought over who deserves the credit for the first successful
spark experiment. More about the debate, details of both men’s electrophysiological research, and
reference material can be found in Finger and Piccolino (2011, pp. 358–368).
Just a few years earlier, Humboldt had helped to stimulate Michael Faraday’s
(1791–1867) interest in electric fishes. In a letter written in 1833, Humboldt had acquainted
Faraday with some of the literature on electric fishes that the Englishman had apparently
overlooked, encouraging him to apply his experimental talents to these fishes by telling
him: “I am convinced that with the knowledge of electro-magnetism and physiology that
we possess today, the study of the phenomena of the gymnoti should shed strong light on
the functions of nerves and the muscular movements of man” (see Faraday, 1993, p. 189).
Faraday was intrigued and he performed experiments on an electric eel imported from
Guyana to London. Some of his eel experiments showed the polarity of its shock, chemi-
cal, and thermo-electrical actions, and how it could even magnetize metals (Faraday, 1838,
1839a, 1839b).
Humboldt’s fame and influence also enabled him to play a major role in guiding
German physiology, even though he lacked a laboratory when he returned to Berlin in
1827.24 Detailing Humboldt’s influence on what took place in Germany is well beyond
the scope of this contribution. But how he helped two of his well-known countrymen
establish themselves as leaders in the emergent field of neurophysiology stands out. These
individuals were Hermann Helmholtz (later von Helmholtz; 1821–1894) and Emil du Bois-
Reymond, who, as we have seen, he had mentioned with warm words in the last edition of
his Ansichten der Natur.25
Humboldt recognized Hermann Helmholtz’s genius while he was fulfilling his military
obligations in Potsdam in return for the medical education he had just received (Cahan,
1993; Finger & Wade, 2002a, 2002b; Hall, 1912; Kahn, 1971; Koenigsberger, 1902, 1906;
McKendrick, 1899; Meulders, 2001). At the time, Helmholtz (Figure 7) was studying how
bodily processes, such as digestion and muscle contractions, could be accounted for by
physics and chemistry, without recourse to a metaphysical force — work that suggested a
lawful conservation of energy (Helmholtz, 1843, 1847, 1848).
Humboldt was at this time a frequent dining companion of King Friedrich William IV
(1795–1861), who took the throne in 1840, and, following in his own father’s footsteps, he
continued to serve the new king as a chamberlain. Now strapped for cash, this was a badly
needed paying position. Serving as the king’s science and culture advisor, Humboldt was
expected to make reports about the state of science in Prussia, and he used these opportuni-
ties to advance the careers of talented young men with limited finances or other hurdles in
their paths. With the king’s ear and having connections spanning all levels of government,
24
Humboldt resided in Paris until 1827, then the leading city in the world for scholarship in
science and medicine, sharing a room at the École Polytechnique with Gay-Lussac for some time. He
looked upon Berlin as terribly backward at this time, and he did everything he could to stay away
before his monarch forced him to come back to Prussia and serve in his court (Stahnisch, 2012a,
p. 164).
25
Hein (1987, p. 139) gives a listing of some of the notables Humboldt helped in various ways, in
certain cases securing positions and financial support from others and in other cases even utilizing his
own remaining funds. This compilation includes physiologist Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858),
who served as mentor to Helmholtz and du Bois-Reymond. It was Humboldt who drew Müller’s
attention to Carlo Matteucci’s nerve and muscle research, which Müller then showed to du Bois-
Reymond, stimulating the young but eager scientist to pursue a career in electrophysiology. What is
even more remarkable about Humboldt as a patron is how he also helped talented people in other
endeavors, such as the arts (broadly defined). It is worth noting that this rather lengthy list includes
two great composers, namely Félix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809–1847) and Giacomo Meyerbeer
(1791–1864).
Figure 7. Hermann (later von) Helmholtz (1821–1894).
Humboldt was able to reduce Helmholtz’s time as a military surgeon, so he could more
fully pursue his scientific agenda.26
Helmholtz now became an assistant in Johannes Müller’s anatomical “museum” and
a lecturer in anatomy at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts). A year later he
became Extraordinarius Professor of Physiology in Königsberg (now Kalinigrad, Russia),
26
Helmholtz had attended the Royal Friedrich-Wilhelm Institute for Medicine and Surgery in
Berlin, which provided free tuition, room, partial board, and other benefits to qualified students, pro-
vided they agreed to serve as surgeons and physicians in the Prussian Army. The usual arrangement
called for two years of service for each year of financial support (usually totaling eight years in the
military). He also studied at the University of Berlin, completing his medical dissertation on the rela-
tionship between fibers (axons) and nerve cell bodies in invertebrates under Johannes Müller in 1842.
He then began studying fermentation and putrefaction, which he believed had to be due to tiny living
organisms, dismissing the idea of some ill-defined or metaphysical force. After he began his mili-
tary service as an assistant surgeon to the cavalry (Eskadron-Chirurg), he used his free time to study
the physical and chemical changes accompanying muscular activity, research that led him to con-
clude that bodily heat could be fully accounted for by food intake and kinetic actions, again without
any recourse to a vital force. His clever studies and amazing intellect caught Humboldt’s attention
and he was “pardoned” from further military service in 1848, so he could devote himself fully to the
advancement of science from German soil (Dassow Walls, 2009, pp. 111–113). Just how Helmholtz’s
brilliant career might have developed were it not for Humboldt’s early help is impossible to discern
and can only invite speculation. What is easy to appreciate is why all of Helmholtz’s biographers
(e.g., Cahan, 1993; Otis, 2007) mention Alexander von Humboldt’s support and, in particular, how
his early intervention cleared the path for the younger German scientist’s later accomplishments and
great fame.
where he conducted his brilliant research on what Müller, a vitalist, had regarded as the
“imponderable nervous principle.”
In 1849, Helmholtz (1850a, 1850b, 1867) began to estimate the speed of the nervous
impulse in frogs and humans, and he continued this work after he left Königsberg (again
with Humboldt’s assistance) for a professorship of anatomy and physiology in Bonn. He
showed nerve transmission is a measureable event that follows the laws of physics and
chemistry, for instance, being affected by temperature (Olesko & Holmes, 1993). His accu-
rate estimates—using a number of different strategies and instruments, including his own
body (still a familiar theme in physiological research)—subsequently allowed scientists
to begin measuring the time needed for mental processing and making decisions (“mental
chronometry”; see Schmidgen, 2002). He also provided early evidence for what Sir Charles
Sherrington (1857–1952) would famously call “synapsis” (Sherrington, 1897, p. 929), since
the time course for a muscle contraction after nerve activation was found to be much longer
than what would be expected for an electrical event going down an intact nerve or, for that
matter, a cable, like those to which the nerves were then being compared (Bennett, 2005,
pp. 24–26).
Emil du Bois-Reymond (Figure 8) is the second neurophysiologist worthy of men-
tion in a Humboldtian context (Borruttan, 1922; du Bois-Reymond & Diepgen, 1927;
Finkelstein, 2000, 2003; Otis, 2007; Rothschuh, 1964). Also one of Müller’s students,
he would emerge as one of the most prolific and powerful proponents of neuromuscular
electrophysiology in the middle and second half of the nineteenth century. Du Bois-
Reymond’s ability to record the negative Schwankung (negative oscillation, later action
potential) following nerve activation and his two massive volumes on animal electricity,
the Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität (1848–1884), are often cited as landmarks
in the field, although some of his interpretations and theories would not withstand the test
of time (Dierig, 2006, pp. 257–270).
Humboldt followed and helped du Bois-Reymond with his career from his student
days, early on attending demonstrations at the “frog kennel” in his parents’ home, where
the younger man lived and worked when not engaged with Müller’s anatomical collection.
Like a much younger scientist, Humboldt even participated in some of his experiments.
As put by du Bois-Reymond in an 1849 letter to fellow experimental physiologist Carl
Ludwig (1816–1895), yet another scientist who Humboldt would help:
I am pleased to know that you are beginning to see what an incomparable

humane man Humboldt is. He is the good angel of all of us. . . . When has
anyone ever seen an 80-year-old man visiting a young scholar in a flat above
the stables, himself lending a hand experimenting . . . and then rolling up in a
smart court carriage for his daily dinner at the King’s side? People will really
know for the first time what he was like when his kindly and powerful hand is
no longer working on our behalf. (du Bois-Reymond & Diepgen, 1927, p. 67;
trans. in Beck, 1987, p. 303)
Humboldt also wrote letters to others in high places praising du Bois-Reymond’s phys-
iological accomplishments—actions that resulted in badly needed funding shortly after du
Bois-Reymond’s previously supportive father suffered a major financial setback. Notably,
in a letter written on April 17, 1849, to the cultural minister, Humboldt tied du Bois-
Reymond’s work to his own substantial achievements, writing “He is studying a matter,
the deep natural secret of muscle movement, with which I, too, was occupied in the earlier
half of my life . . . [he] has physically demonstrated how . . . a person can move a magnetic
Figure 8. Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896).
needle at a distance through force of will and muscle tension” (Schwartz & Wenig, 1997,
p. 74; trans. in Otis, 2007, p. 91).
Knowing the importance of Humboldt’s support, du Bois-Reymond repeatedly pre-
sented what he was doing to Humboldt and others as a continuation of what the senior
statesman for German science had been engaged in decades earlier. “Physicists and physi-
ologists will see this dream realized of an electricity operating the movements and perhaps
transmitting sensations in animal bodies,” he wrote to Humboldt on May 20, 1845. He con-
tinued unabashedly by calling it “a dream that will soon have lasted a century, and of whose
prestige, if I am not mistaken, you yourself, Monsieur le Baron, have never ceased to be
aware” (Schwartz & Wenig, 1997, p. 74; trans. in Otis, 2007, p. 91).
Du Bois-Reymond even made and used an illustration of the epic fight that Humboldt
had described between the electric eels and the pack animals for the frontispiece of his
first volume on animal electricity (Figure 9), contending, every scientist is a descendant of
Humboldt. Moreover, the frontispiece to the first volume bore Humboldt’s name (together
Figure 9. Emil du Bois-Reymond’s illustration of the epic fight between horses and eels. This picture
was used in the first volume of his celebrated book on animal electricity (du Bois-Reymond, 1848).
The illustration was based on what Humboldt witnessed in South America in 1800, and how he
verbally described the spectacular event in subsequent publications (color figure available online).
with those of Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Christoph Heinrich Pfaff (1773–1852),
Heinrich Ritter (1791–1869), and Leopoldo Nobili (1784–1835)), as pioneers in the recent
history of electrophysiological research. While trying to get more funding for du Bois-
Reymond’s research program, Humboldt, the recognized patron of young and upcoming
German scientists, would show this massive work to his king.
With Humboldt’s help, du Bois-Reymond became a member of the Prussian Academy
of Sciences in 1851, a pivotal step in his notable career. Upon Müller’s death in 1858, and
with Humboldt’s support, he was awarded the prestigious Chair of Physiology in Berlin.
It was the first independent chair of physiology.27 Occupying this coveted post until his
death in 1896, du Bois-Reymond, albeit with his authoritarian and unyielding personality,
would continue to promote the unity of fish, frog, and human electrophysiology, a theme
consistent with Humboldt’s view of nature, and one destined to gain more support with
techniques that Humboldt could not have dreamed of, even late in his long life.
Humboldt died in Berlin on May 6, 1859, and was buried next to his brother Wilhelm
von Humboldt (1767–1835) at Schloss Tegel. His life ended peacefully in the very same
year in which Charles Darwin (1809–1882), on November 24th, published his landmark
On the Origin of Species, revealing even more about nature’s deepest secrets (Darwin,
1859). It should come as no surprise that Darwin read, admired, and some say even idol-
ized Humboldt (Dassow Walls, 2009, p. 11), the intrepid researcher and world traveler
whose long overlooked path from galvanism to animal electricity can now be more fully
appreciated.
27
Carl Reichert (1811–1883) was given the newly separated Chair of Anatomy (Stahnisch,
2012b, pp. 166–169).
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ISSN: 0964-704X (Print) 1744-5213 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/njhn20

Alexander von Humboldt: Galvanism, Animal

Stanley Finger , Marco Piccolino & Frank W. Stahnisch

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Alexander von Humboldt: Galvanism, Animal

STANLEY FINGER,1 MARCO PICCOLINO,2

Keywords Alexander von Humboldt, galvanism, animal electricity, Luigi Galvani,

Address correspondence to Stanley Finger, PhD, Department of Psychology, Programs in

Figure 1. Aimé Goujaud “Bonpland” (1773–1858).

Baudin (1754–1803) on his voyage of circumnavigation of the globe. Disappointed when

Humboldt’s Eel Experiments

If by chance a stroke be received before the fish is wounded or wearied by long

It is possible to connect the nerves [experimentally] of warm- and cold-blooded

From the New World to Italy

Figure 5. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850).

Volta, his Battery, and Humboldt

Figure 6. An early voltaic pile or battery (color figure available online).

On the plains of l’Apure, we have made very intriguing experiments on the

American Philosophical Society’s library.12 While at Philosophic Hall, Humboldt would

Electricity, not Galvanism

These effects are, however, dependent on three variable circumstances; the

Figure 7. Hermann (later von) Helmholtz (1821–1894).

I am pleased to know that you are beginning to see what an incomparable

Figure 8. Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896).

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