An illustration from a book by Italian Luigi Galvani showing him conducting experiments in 1791 of the ability of electricity to produce movement in dead matter (what he termed as "animal electricity"); a further perusal of his 1771 discovery that dead frog legs can be made to twitch when connected to an metal-junction type of electrochemical circuit (frog legs suspended by copper hooks on an iron rail, the arc or switch made by touching a scalpel of the foot to the rail). [6] These experiments served as the basis to Mary Shelley's famous 1818 story of Frankenstein. | An 1831 Illustration, by Theodor von Holst, of the laboratory creation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 story of Frankenstein, a scientifically-created living human made by surgically re-connecting the severed dead parts of various corpses and then reanimating the body with electricity. [7] |