Rome's physician: Guido Baccelli and his legacy in the new Italian capital.

Abstract

Many Italian physicians played a more or less relevant role in the military, social and political events which paved the way to and accompanied the birth of the unitary State, which 150th anniversary falls in 2011, but probably just one of them, Guido Baccelli (1832-1916), left so many traces in the very landscape of the present-day Italian capital. Even if the millions of tourists pouring into Rome every year are not aware of it, the vision and tenacity of this celebrated physician lay behind quite a lot of the most typical and popular places of the Eternal City. Baccelli, as a politician, took care of his home town with the same kindness and effectiveness he put, as a physician, in the care of the sick.