Galvani began original work of a high order very early in his medical career. His graduation thesis on the human skeleton treated especially of the formation and development of bone, and attracted no little attention. It is noteworthy because of the breadth of view in it, for it touches on the various questions relative to osteology, from the standpoint of physics and chemistry, as well as medicine and surgery. It was sufficient to obtain for its author the place of lecturer in anatomy in the University of Bologna, besides the post of director of the teaching of anatomy in the Institute of Sciences, a subsidiary institution. Here, from the very beginning, Galvani's course was popular. He was not, as we note elsewhere, a fluent talker, but he was one of the first who introduced experimental demonstrations of his subject into his lectures, and this made his teaching very attractive and drew crowds to his university courses. Galvani's work as an anatomist, however, was done much more in comparative anatomy than in the study of the human being. He selected birds for the special subject of his first investigations in the field, and his monograph on the kidneys of birds attracted widespread attention among the scientists of Europe. As the farthest removed from man of the beings that are warm-blooded, these creatures have always attracted particular attention, and, quite apart from any interest in evolution, were the subject of special investigation. Owing to the facility with which they can be studied in embryonic stages in the hatching egg, most of the peculiarities of their structure and development are very well known now. The kidneys of the bird are especially interesting, because they represent a different phase of development from that of human beings. Galvani had selected, then, one of the cardinal or turning-point subjects in comparative anatomy. As he pointed out very clearly, the kidneys of birds differ very much among themselves, and the intense muscular action of this creature makes a large amount of excretory material, that must be disposed of, and consequently demands much more active kidney function than occurs in most other classes of animals. Galvani studied every feature--the vessels, the nerves, the canals--and almost necessarily pointed out many new points or added hitherto unknown details.