"Using an isolated frog heart preparation with ligatures around the atria, Luigi Luciani, an Italian physiologist working in 1873 in Carl Ludwig’s famous laboratory in Leipzig, was the first to demonstrate cardiac group beating, which he named periodic rhythm. He attributed this to increased resistance to impulse propagation between the atria and the ventricle. Karel F. Wenckebach, in his 1899 landmark report of group beating in a patient in which he also used pulse tracings, credited Luciani with this discovery. Wenckebach referred to the phenomena as “Luciani periods" (Upshaw & Silverman, "Luigi Luciani and the earliest graphic demonstration of Wenckebach periodicity," Circulation, 101 (2000) 2662–2668.

Luciani distinguished three stages of starvation in man – hunger, physiological inanition, and pathological inanition. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Luciani succeeded in keeping dogs alive after total extirpation of the cerebellum, and initiated the modern study of cerebellar function. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

5th edition (5 vols.), 1919-21; English translation (5 vols.), London, 1911-21. Luciani was professor of physiology successively at Siena, Florence, and Rome.