GAL'VANISM, noun [from Galvani of Bologna, the discover.] Electrical phenomena in which the electricity is developed without the aid of friction, and in which a chimical action takes place between certain bodies. Galvanism is heat, light, electricity and magnetism, united in combination or in simultaneous action; sometimes one and sometimes another of them predominating, and thus producing more or less all the effects of each: usual means of excitement, contact of dissimilar bodies, especially of metals and fluids.
Source: Webster's 1828 American Dictionary ↗ · public-domain · returned verbatim, no AI