Bioelectricity is the production of electricity by organisms.

The Italian anatomist and physician Luigi Galvani was one of the first to investigate experimentally the phenomenon of what came to be named "bioelectricity" (bioelectrogenesis).

Around the 1790s, through numerous observations and experiments, Galvani caused muscular contraction in a frog by touching its nerves with electrostatically charged metal. Later, he was able to cause muscular contraction by touching the nerve with different metals without a source of electrostatic charge. He concluded that animal tissue contained an innate vital force, which he termed "animal electricity."

In fact, it was Volta's famous disagreement with Galvani's theory of animal electricity that led Volta, in 1800, to build the voltaic pile to prove that electricity did not come from the animal tissue but was generated by the contact of different metals in a moist environment.

Volta’s invention was to give rise to electrochemistry, electromagnetism and the modern applications of electricity. Also Galvani's idea of animal electricity did not prove useless. Galvani’s research was soon to develop into electrophysiology and modern biology.

Galvani's remarkable experiments helped to establish the basis for the biological study of neurophysiology and neurology. The paradigm shift was complete: nerves were not water pipes or channels, as Descartes and his contemporaries thought, but electrical conductors. Information within the nervous system was carried by electricity generated directly by the organic tissue. As the result of the experimental demonstrations carried out by Luigi Galvani and his followers, the electrical nature of the nerve-muscle function was unveiled. However, a direct proof could only be made when scientists could be able to measure or to detect the natural electrical currents generated in the nervous and muscular cells. Galvani did not have the technology to measure these currents, because they were too small.

In modern times the measurement of bioelectric potentials has become a routine practice in clinical medicine. Electrical efects originating in active cells of the heart and the brain, for example, are commonly monitored and analyzed for diagnostic purposes.