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"A Galvanised Corpse” (1826)

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Hand-colored lithograph. In an image inspired by Aldini's experiments, the Jacksonian editor Francis Preston Blair rises from his coffin, revived by a primitive galvanic battery. He is shown with two demons and another man (possibly Amos Kendall).

One demon cries in frustration: "There! We've lost him after all! See! They are bringing him to life again!" The other demon replies: "Lose him! ha ha! No, no, no, Horny. Rest you easy on that score. But can't you see that it's all for our gain that he should be galvanized into activity again? Where have we his equal on earth? especially since dear Amos, poor fellow, has got his hands so full, at the Post Office that he can't write for us as he used to. Show me another man that can lie like him. They talk of Croswell, but Harris is nothing to him. I doubt if I can beat him myself. Lose him! a good joke that!" The man standing nearby remarks: "Had I not been born insensible to fear, now should I be most horribly afraid. Hence! horrible shadows! unreal mockery. Hence! And yet it stays — can it be real [?] How it grins! Hoe malignity and venom are "blended in cadaverous [sic] union in its countenance! It must surely be "a galvanised" corpse. But what do I feel? The thing begins to draw me. I feel it plainly — and now it winks at me — Oh! I'm lost! I can't withstand it — I shall hug it! I shall hug it! — Oh yes I shall hug-hug-hug it..... [Faints, and falls on the neck of the Corpse.]

Credit: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund and Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, by Exchange, 1970. (Source. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public domain. Edited by Dr. Douglas J Lanska.)