We are rather prone to think that news of scientific discoveries traveled slowly in Europe in the eighteenth century. There is abundant evidence of the contrary in these sketches of electricians, and Galvani's case is one of the most striking. How much attention Galvani's discovery attracted and how soon definite details of it spread to the other end of Europe may be judged from the fact that, in 1793, Mr. Richard Fowler published a small book at Edinburgh bearing the title, Experiments and Observations Relative to the Influence Lately Discovered by M. Galvani, and commonly called Animal Electricity.[15] This little book, which may be seen at the Surgeons General Library, Washington, and in the Library of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, New York, details a large number of experiments that Fowler had made during the preceding year or more, so that Galvani's work must have reached him within a few months after its publication. Fowler mentions the fact that Galvani had been occupied many years before this in the study of electric fishes, especially the _torpedo_, the _gymnotus electricus_ and _silurus electricus_. He also mentions a curious observation of Cotugno, who, a few years before, had received a shock from a mouse while dissecting the little animal, which makes it clear that imagination played a role in helping to the introduction of the newer ideas with regard to animal electricity.[16] But before his discovery was to attract so much attention, Galvani had to work it out, and this is the merit of the man. It is almost needless to say, these experiments upon frogs were not accomplished in a few days or a few weeks. Galvani had his duties as Professor of Anatomy to attend to besides the obligations imposed upon him as a busy practitioner of medicine and surgery. At that time, it was not nearly so much the custom as it is at the present, to use frogs for experiments, with the idea that conclusions might be obtained of value for the biological sciences generally, and especially for medicine. There has always been such an undercurrent of feeling, that such experiments have been more or less a beating of the air. Galvani found this opposition not only to his views with regard to animal electricity as enunciated after experimental demonstration, but also met with no little ridicule because of the supposed waste of time at occupations that could not be expected to lead to any practical results. It was the custom of scientific men to laugh somewhat scornfully at his patient persistence in studying out every detail of electrical action on the frog, and one of the supposedly prominent scientists of the time even dubbed him "the frog dancing master." This did not, however, deter Galvani from his work, though some of the bitter things must have proved cutting enough, and might have discouraged a smaller man, less confident of the scientific value of the work that he was doing.