CECCARELLI, ALESSANDRO. — Pontifical chief physician 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 lazzaretto during the cholera epidemic of 1854, until he himself was stricken and faced serious danger to his life, from which he suffered consequences for the rest of his existence.
Chief surgeon of the Papal forces in 1860, together with his colleague C. Mazzoni he supported the meritorious Dr. F. Palasciano in his work to secure recognition of the neutrality of the wounded in war. This was 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 from public life and became surgeon to Pius IX.
Surgeon to the Conclave and chief physician to Leo XIII, he was a member of the governing board of Catholic secondary schools and professor of pharmacology and surgery at the free Pontifical University of Palazzo Altemps, which arose after 1870 following a sectarian direction taken by several professors of the Sapienza against Döllinger. Surgeon in place of Panunzi at the Fatebenefratelli hospital and chief surgeon of the association of Italian Knights of Malta for the care of the wounded in war, he organized the first field dressing stations and hospital trains; director of the health services of the Apostolic Palaces, he oversaw the arrangement of the S. Marta lazzaretto, desired by Leo XIII in view of a cholera epidemic in 1884, and the construction of the civil hospital of Carpineto. A member of the administrative council of the Catholic Artisan-Workers’ Bank, from 1889 he directed the dispensary for consultation and medication for the poor at the Zoccolette, the first of its kind established by Pius IX; between 1869 and 1872, with the support of the impulse given by the dukes Salviati, he created the Bambin Gesù children’s hospital, now pontifical, where later he long and gratuitously devoted his professional labors. Several times elected by the Catholic voters of Rome to the City Council, and deputy to the Congregation of Charity, he promoted the idea of a floating hospital in 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 elderly. At his death, he bequeathed to the hospital of Orvieto his valuable scientific library together with his entire and rich surgical instrument collection.