CECCARELLI, ALESSANDRO. — Papal archiater and chief surgeon of the papal army, born at Castiglione in Teverina, near Orvieto, on 11 March 1830, died in Rome on 19 February 1893. After his studies at the Sapienza, he distinguished himself greatly at the S. Spirito lazaretto during the cholera epidemic of 1854, until, himself stricken, he came into serious danger of losing his life and suffered its consequences throughout his existence.
Chief surgeon of the papal troops (1860), together with his colleague C. Mazzoni he supported the meritorious Dr F. Palasciano in the work of securing recognition for the neutrality of the wounded in war. This formed the basis of the Geneva Convention, to which the Papal Government adhered on 9 May 1868, and which marked the starting point of the International Red Cross. After 1870 he retired to private life and became surgeon to Pius IX.
Surgeon of the Conclave and archiater to Leo XIII, he was a member of the governing council of the Catholic secondary schools and lecturer in pharmacology and surgery at the free pontifical university of Palazzo Altemps, established after 1870 as a result of the sectarian course directed against Doellinger by several professors of the Sapienza. Surgeon in place of Panunzi at the Fatebenefratelli hospital and chief surgeon of the association of the Italian Knights of Malta for the care of the wounded in war, he organized the first medical-treatment huts and the first hospital trains; director of the health services of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces, he supervised the arrangements for the S. Marta lazaretto, commissioned by Leo XIII in anticipation of a cholera epidemic in 1884, and the construction of the civil hospital at Carpineto. A member of the administrative council of the Banca cattolica artistico-operaia, from 1889 he directed the consultation and treatment dispensary for the poor, the first of its kind established by Pius IX, at the Zoccolette; between 1869 and 1872, assisting the initiative of the Salviati dukes, he created the Bambin Gesù children’s hospital, now pontifical, where he subsequently devoted his beneficial professional labors for a long time and without charge. Several times elected by the Catholic voters of Rome to the municipal council, and a delegate to the Congregazione di Carità, he became the promoter of a floating hospital at Anzio for rachitic and scrofulous children, and obtained from Leo XIII that the monastery of S. Cosimato in Trastevere be converted into a refuge for abandoned old people. At his death, he bequeathed to the hospital of Orvieto his valuable scientific library together with his entire and rich collection of surgical instruments.