All Saints Week - Giuseppe Moscati

During All Saints Week, we are highlighting a new-to-me Saint each day here on Musings of a Discerning Woman.  Today's Saint ... Guiseppe Moscati, the first modern doctor to be canonized.

He was born in Italy in 1880. He became a physician, university professor, and pioneer in the field of biochemistry.  He was noted for his holistic care of the patient. Writing to one of his former students, he once said:  "Remember that you must treat not only bodies, but also souls, with counsel that appeals to their minds and hearts rather than with cold prescriptions to be sent into the pharmacist."

In another letter to a student, he wrote:  "Not science, but charity has transformed the world."  He treated poor patients free-of-charge, and reportedly often sent them home with a prescription and a 50-lire note. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 1906, he helped evacuate patients from a nursing home barely escaping injury himself.

He died in 1927 at the age of 47 on an ordinary day.  He went to mass, received communion which was his habit, made his rounds at the hospital, at lunch and laid down.  He never woke up.

He was canonized in 1987 during the synod of the bishops on the layity.

Read more about him here and here.