Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or Modern Prometheus, is a daring tale of the creation of life gone wrong, inspired by the many alchemists and scientists of the time. From a young age, Shelley was exposed to the concept of social engineering and social and moral issues. When she married Percy Shelley, he brought about the ideas of man playing God. A man with a deep interest in chemical experiments, he exposed Mary the whelm of chemical experimentation and natural philosophy. Many will agree that Shelley’s novel was influenced heavily by four prominent European scientists: Luigi Galvani, Giovanni Aldini, and Johann Konrad Dippel. Electricity at this time was a new concept, only explored previously by Albert Einstein. Electricity had compelled the minds of many scientists, …show more content…
He published his findings in his essay, entitled ‘Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion’. “Galvani’s experiments on the nerves and legs of frogs helped him to establish a link between electricity and muscle movement” (Re-Animating a Murderer). This connection led Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, to become interested in ‘animal electricity’, the electrical force that starts in the brain and flows through the nerves to make muscles move. Aldini noted his uncle’s theory of ‘animal electricity’ and Alessandro Volta’s idea of ‘dissimilar metals’. He held his most famous exhibition in 1803 at the Newgate Prison in London, UK. Here he displayed how when electrical currents were applied into the mouth and ear of an executed prisoner, the body moved. In “The Newgate Calendar”, a book by Andrew Knapp, he writes that when the electricity was first applied, the jaws began to quiver. Subsequently, the right hand clenched and there was movement in the legs and thighs of his body. “Not surprisingly, some observers thought Aldini was bringing Foster back to life” (Inside