The effect was named after the scientist Luigi Galvani, who investigated the effect of electricity on dissected animals in the 1780s and 1790s. When Galvani was doing some dissection work in his lab, his scalpel touched the body of a frog, and he saw the muscles in the frog's leg twitch. Galvani referred to the phenomenon as animal electricity, believing that he had discovered a distinct form of electricity.