Shelley's Frankenstein Association
Many writers and historians recently have stated Aldini was an inspiration for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein due to his many public experimentations of bio-electric Galvanism. Aldini's most famous public demonstrations of the electro-stimulation technique of deceased limbs was performed on the executed criminal George Forster at Newgate in London in 1803.
The most famous of these assertions is by the History Channel in their "True Horror" series (produced by Hardy Pictures in 2009) which states Aldini specifically as one of the sources for Mary Shelley's novel.
While it is true that Aldini did do these attempts at human reanimation during the same time of Shelley's writings, and Forster execution was a sensational notice in the public venue, there is no specific reference that Shelley did actually adapt Aldini into her works despite obviously being aware of Aldini's experiments which were done in public at the Royal College of Physicians in 1803.
Read more about this topic: Giovanni Aldini
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