The most important scientific discovery made by man, was made by a woman.
Lucia Galvani, wife of Luigi Galvani, discovered the electrical capacity of cells to store and discharge minute quantities of electricity when a switch and pathway is provided. Thus her observation provided the basis for batteries, transistors, and the discrete storage and movement of minute electrical charges in packets now known as the digital transfer of information.
Her discovery has been popularized as her being no more than a dutiful wife preparing frogs for dinner when she used a knife to cut the frog legs which were resting on a zinc tray. The legs are said to have jumped, causing her to scream and attracted the attention of her husband, and his students. Accordingly he is given credit for explaining what happened and thus credit for the discovery. (His explanation was wrong.)
Lucia was the daughter of Luigi's mentor, Galeazzi, and therefore was not of little learning. She assisted her husband in his research and on her death, June 30, 1790 Luigi went into mourning for his life's companion and withdrew from the scientific world.
A more likely telling of the discovery is found in Chambers's Encyclopedia, which states "Many versions of this circumstance have obtained credence: but the simple fact seems to be, that Galvani's wife happened one day to witness with surprise the convulsive muscular movements produced in a skinned frog, by its inanimate body having been accidentally brought into contact with a scalpel which lay on the table, and had become charged by contact with an adjoining electrical machine. She hastened to communicate the interesting phenomenon to her husband, who at once instituted a prolonged series of experiments." pp 404, Library of Universal Knowledge, vol VI, 1880.
Be that as it may, the observation was made and the enquiring minds of the two pursued the discovery which ultimately was the greatest scientific event known to man.
(The stimulus of the flow of the electrical current from the dissimilar metals (the scapula and the zinc tray) produced a flow of electrons in the frog's legs, far greater than that imparted by the contact, and it could be repeated upon recontact.)
A popularized telling of the results of the Galvani's discovery is to be found in Thomas Green Fessenden's poem, Terrible Tractoration. In describing the effects of a device which had been introduced to the public by an American Benjamin Douglass Perkins, Fessenden poeticizes the work of Dr. Galvani. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Dr. Holmes apparently never understood Fessenden's work but depended upon others for an interpretation and so was mislead in his belief that Fessenden was in fact defending use of the "Tractors". Dr. Caustic, aka, Fessenden, was attacking those who practiced medicine which can best be described in the following ditty:
A doctor fell into a well,
And broke his collar bone;
He should have tended to the sick,
And left the well alone.
Those who used Perkins' tractor, two wands of dissimilar metals, and claimed benefit in relief of all number of diseases and ills, were on the forefront of describing the "placebo" effect. Scientist still cannot explain how it is that a person can feel better just because they think they feel better, or why a drug produces a benefit although it is nothing more than sugar-water or the like.
(Fessenden, who was known as America's Butler for his writing Terrible Tractoration, a Hudibrastic poem, enjoyed a bit of notoriety in 1805 or so, established himself as writer of Democracy. Later he became known as the editor of a widely read agricultural magazine. )
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