Emily Dickinson Lexicon

GAL'VAN-ISM, n. [from Galvani of Bologna, the discoverer.]

Electrical phenomena in which the electricity is developed without the aid of friction, and in which a chimical action takes place between certain bodies. Edin. Encyc. 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. Hare. Silliman.