Francesco Della Valle
Italian physician
Francesco Della Valle (2 February 1858 in Puccianiello-Caserta – 27 July 1937) was an Italian physician and general who served as General Director of Military Health from 1920 to 1925.
Life
Military career
After graduating in 1883, Della Valle joined the Military Health Service and in 1888, when he was a young lieutenant, he was assigned to the Ministry of War. Della Valle spent much of his career in the corps, acquiring extensive skills in the organization of the Royal Army's health system and preventive medicine among the troops.
Beginning of the War period
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 led the effort to keep up with the dramatic daily increase in the needs of the forces at the front. According to him:
it was a matter of coordinating and directing the entire medical resources of the country for the war, of utilizing men and things as much as possible for the proper execution of the service, with sufficient guarantees of breadth and technical capacity.
From mid 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 interaction between civil and military health authorities in the fight against infectious diseases in war zones. This interaction often resulted in so much difficulty Della Valle said; "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 war". He acknowledging the impossibility of making accurate diagnoses of unconfirmed types of tuberculosis during the expeditious medical examinations for recruitment.
War Period
On 9 September 1917, Francesco Della Valle was promoted to Major General for his outstanding merits. The 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 welfare committees such as those of the Knights of Malta, the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus and the Jesuits" In 41 months of the war.
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