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Francesco Della Valle

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Francesco Della Valle (Puccianiello - Caserta, 2 February 1858 - 27 July 1937) was an Italian physician and General. He was also the General Director of Military Health from 1920 to 1925.

Biography

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After graduating in 1883, Della Valle joined the Military Health service and in 1888, when he was still a young lieutenant, he was assigned to the Ministry of War. He spent important periods of his career in the central organs of the Corps, acquiring extensive skills in the organization of the Royal Army's health system and in preventive medicine among the troops.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Della Valle was in charge of the Military Health Office of the Supreme Mobilized Command as a medical colonel, from where he organized and coordinated the enormous organizational and innovative effort to keep up with the dramatic daily increase in the needs of the forces at the front where 'the enormous number of soldiers in the field, the frequent use of artillery, the type and number of wounded, the infectious diseases and the duration of the conflict which lasted longer than expected, imposed the need for a military health system capable of adapting to the new war conditions when the war had already begun'. [1]

From the summer of 1915, Della Valle was a member of the 'Vigilance Commission' set up by the General Intendency of the Supreme Command for 'the need to activate and integrate the prophylactic services', facilitating the interaction between civil and military health authorities in the fight against infectious diseases in the war zones. [2] This interaction often resulted so difficult that Della Valle himself observed that 'it must be considered that no service was as much in contrast with the action of the Command as the health service because of its tyrannical requirements for the purposes of war' [3], even acknowledging the impossibility of making accurate diagnoses of unconfirmed types of tuberculosis during the expeditious medical examinations for recruitment. [4]

On the 9th September 1917, Francesco Della Valle was promoted to Major General for his outstanding merits. The great Italian military medical system, under his coordination, 'had to manage the transport, care and hospitalization of over two and a half million wounded and sick people, making use of the Military Health Corps and the Italian Red cross apparatus (medical personnel and 'Dames of the Red Cross') assisted by voluntary nurses from various welfare committees such as those of the Knights of Malta, the Order of SS Maurice and Lazarus and the Jesuits' [5] in 41 months of war. In his role, Della Valle contributed to the development of the so-called 'health-chain' for the triage and sorting of the wounded from the battlefront to the most suitable hospitals of different capacities, to the introduction of 'surgical ambulances' (beyond the name, they actually were real mobile operating rooms of the Army run by doctors of high surgical competence, which were equipped on several tents and vehicles), to the interaction between the military and civilian health systems and to the establishment of the Università Castrense [6] in San Giorgio di Nogaro (UD) for the emergency training of the large number of military doctors needed to assist the numerous wounded.

During the entire war period, in addition to the recalled organizational and innovative action, Francesco Della Valle contributed to encourage the establishment of consultancies or specialized sections in the military hospitals in the war zone, trying to overcome the vision of war medicine as capables à tout faire [7]. He particularly paid attention to the containment of castrensi epidemics and, more generally, to the entire problem of infectious diseases that the frontline presented, inevitably going to touch civil society and territorial public health.

In the same context, Della Valle was active in fighting the cholera epidemics of the first war period [8] (for this reason he was awarded the silver medal for public health merits in 1916) and in the use of hospitals and convalescence warehouses for the isolation of sick people suffering from or suspected of carrying epidemic infectious diseases (even though there were considerable difficulties related to the frequent clearing of health facilities due to the needs of operations in war zones) [9]. In 1917, he introduced typhoid vaccination for mobilized troops.

From 1920 to 1925, once Della Valle was promoted to lieutenant general, he headed the newly established General Directorate of Military Health promoting, through his professionalism and experience, the reorganization of the Army's health system that emerged from the bloody experience of the Great War. In this role position, Della Valle organized and chaired the 2nd International Congress of Military Medicine and Pharmacy [10] in Rome in 1923, gaining national and international appreciation for the preparation of the event and the quantity and quality of the scientific papers presented.

It was an emblematic review of how the drama of war had pushed medicine to experiment and improve therapies, intervention techniques, hygiene and organizational practices and vaccination practices. From 1920, Della Valle was an Ordinary Academician of the Royal Medical Academy of Rome, and from 1923 he was also the Honorary President of the Permanent International Military Health Committee.

Della Valle also deserves a special mention for his attention and care he dedicated especially during and after the war, to bear witness to the activity and sacrifice of the many military doctors - career and complementary officers - and health assistants who fell, were wounded and disabled by the events of the war, including the various diseases contracted during military service. In the years following the end of the war, he was also the President of the 'Committee for the celebration of doctors who fell in the war'; in this position, Della Valle promoted and followed - entrusting the coordination to the medical captain Federico Bocchetti - a two-year project for the collection of documents and testimonies, which in 1924 resulted in the publication of the 'Libro d'oro. I medici italiani ai loro eroi' [11].

The last institutional position fulfilled by Francesco Della Valle was that of the President of the 'Superior Commission for War Pensions', which he held until February 1st, 1933.

Honours and awards

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War Merit Cross

Grand Officer of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus

Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy

Commemorative medal of the Italo-Austrian War (1915-1918)

Silver Medal for public health merits

Mauritian Medal of merit for fifty years of military career

Magistral Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Notes

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  1. ^ ferrante/archives/3581#more-3581 La Sanità Militare nella Grande Guerra, su secolnovo.it.
  2. ^ Domenico De Napoli, La Sanità Militare in Italia durante la I Guerra Mondiale, Roma, Editrice APES, 1989, p. 70.
  3. ^ Domenico De Napoli, La Sanità Militare in Italia durante la I Guerra Mondiale, Roma, Editrice APES, 1989, p. 78.
  4. ^ Gianfranco Donelli e Valeria Di Carlo, La sanità pubblica italiana negli anni a cavallo della Prima Guerra Mondiale, Roma, Armando editore, 2016, pp. 198-199.
  5. ^ Massimiliano Galasso (taken from a publication of), La Sanità Militare nella Grande Guerra, “Il Giornale di Medicina Militare on line”, su difesa.it, 24 maggio 2015.
  6. ^ Università Castrense, su universitacastrense.eu.
  7. ^ Gaetano Boschi, La guerra e le arti sanitarie, Milano, Mondadori, 1931, pp. 175-176.
  8. ^ Gaetano Boschi, La guerra e le arti sanitarie, Milano, Mondadori, 1931, p. 160.
  9. ^ Gaetano Boschi, La guerra e le arti sanitarie, Milano, Mondadori, 1931, pp. 166-167.
  10. ^ Relazioni del 2° Congresso Internazionale di Medicina e Farmacia militari, in "Giornale di Medicina Militare", Department of War – Rome, year LXXI – 1923, June-July, fasc. VI-VII, pp. 241-386.
  11. ^ Francesco G. Urbino e Pasquale Urbino, La sanità Militare nella Grande Guerra, in Relazione al XXXIX Congresso Nazionale della SOCIETA' ITALIANA DI STORIA DELLA MEDICINA, Firenze, 12-14 giugno 1998.

Bibliography

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  1. Angelo Fortunato Formigine, Chi è – Dizionario degli italiani d’oggi, 3rd edition, Formigine Editore, Rome, 1936, p. 305, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000528002 - from the Library of the University of Michigan
  2. 'Tenente Generale Medico Francesco Della Valle', Giornale di Medicina Militare, Department of War – Rome, 1937, July, pp. 684 – 688
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  1. Combattere, Curare, Istruire – Padova “Capitale al fronte” e l’Università Castrense. 19 ottobre 2018 / 6 gennaio 2019 - Padova MUSME Museo di Storia della Medicina. Thematic exhibition promoted by the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Padua and the MUSME Foundation (https://www.musme.it/combattere-curare-istruire/ and https://padovacultura.padovanet.it/it/attivita-culturali/combattere-curare-istruire)
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