De motu animalium; dissertationibus

The Hague, 1743. LATER EDITION. Engraved frontispiece, title pages of the two parts of the Borelli work in red and black, and 19 folding plates; interior browned. Contemporary paste-paper boards, worn, speckled edges. Borelli’s famous work applying mechanics to muscles (first published posthumously in 1680-81) together with Johann Bernoulli’s treatises applying mechanics to fermentation, along with his Dissertation de motu musculorum. This classic work established muscular mechanics as a science and was important in the history of cardiology and circulation. Bernoulli (1667-1748), of the famous Swiss family of mathematicians and physicists, was influenced by Borelli’s iatromathematical approach, as he demonstrated in his first paper on fermentation.

Dibner, Heralds of Science, 190 (1680-81 ed.); Wellcome, II, p. 204 (other eds.).