BORELLI, JOHN ALPHONSO, the head of what has been called the iatro-mathematical sect,—or that which, misled by the great progress that the application of the mathematics had produced in the physical sciences, attempted to secure the same advantage for medicine, by subjecting to calculation the phenomena of the living economy,—was born at Naples on the 28th of January 1608. He professed his system of iatro-mathematical philosophy in some of the most celebrated universities of Italy, particularly at Florence and Pisa, where he rose into high favour with the princes of the house of Medicis; but having been engaged in the revolt of Messina, he was obliged to retire to Rome, where he spent the remainder of his life under the protection of Christina queen of Sweden, who honoured him with her friendship, and by her liberality softened the rigour of his fortune. He died of a pleurisy on the 31st of December 1679, in the seventy-second year of his age. Borelli, more judicious than Bellini, restricted the application of his system chiefly to muscular motions, or to those phenomena of the animal economy which are in certain points subject to the laws of mechanics; and it cannot be denied that it conducted him to the discovery of some principles new in themselves, and directly opposed to the received belief of his time. But his followers, less cautious, wished to generalize the application he had made; and in framing hypotheses, on which time and the return to a sound medical philosophy have done justice, they greatly retarded the restoration of the science. The works of Borelli are, 1. Della Causa delle Febri maligne, Pisa, 1658, 4to; 2. De Renum usu iudicium, Strasburg, 1664, 8vo; 3. Euclides Restitutus, 1628, 4to; 4. Apollonii Pergai Conicorum libri
v. vi. et vii. Florence, 1661; 5. Theoria Medicorum Planetarum ex causis Physicis deducta, Florence, 1666, 4to; 6. Tractatus di vi Percussionis, Bologna, 1667, 4to; 7. Historia et Meteorologia incendii Ethnei, Reggio, 1669, 4to; 8. De Motionibus naturalibus a gravitate pendentibus, Bologna, 1670, 4to; and, 9. De Motu Animalium, opus posthumum, Rome, 1680, 1681, 4to.