At the age of 23 Doctor Joseph Moscati, started his mission of looking after suffering and desperate people, who, to his eyes illuminated by faith, were considered to be as chosen sons of God, lovingly hidden in each of them.

Sorrow again visited his home. His brother Albert died rather unexpectedly in Benevento at the age of only 34. As he had been unwell for some years, he had wished to go and live with the Hospital Brothers of St. John of God, offering himself to God and devoting himself to prayer and penance. His was a saintly death.

"The beauty and the enchantment of life pass away - wrote Joseph - It just remains eternal love surviving in us, which is our hope and religion, for love is God. The grandeur of death is not the end, but the beginning of the Sublime and the Divine, in whose presence flowers and beauty don’t have any meaning."

He remembered, "As a child, looking at the hospital from our terrace, I was seized with wholesome perplexity and began to think of the transience of all things, and passing illusions, as the falling petals from the flowers of the orange-trees around me..."

Naples, the Vesuvius

In April 1906, Vesuvius began a period of terrifying activity. In Torre del Greco, there was a branch of the United Hospitals for elderly invalids. Doctor Moscati became alarmed and, without wasting a moment, he left Naples and reached Torre del Greco in a thick rain of ash, which was dangerous to human life.
During his rush to the hospital, he decided to evacuate the inmates. He began moving the most helpless, encouraging them and comforting them until all were safe. Hardly had the last patient left the hospital with his help that the roof collapsed with a frightful roar. He was truly the instrument of Providence.

His charity showed itself in another calamity, the cholera that struck in 1911. By his self-sacrificing devotion to duty, he helped in controlling the epidemic and in its final extinction.

In 1911, he came to the last stages and the final crown of his studies and scientific preparation. In June, he passed brilliantly the extremely difficult examination for Medical Coadjutor of the United Hospitals. In July he was chosen as holder of the University Chair in Chemical Physiology and began lecturing on "Laboratory research applied to Clinics", "Clinics applied to medicine", "Clinical medicine".

"There was no development in medicine that he did not know thoroughly", says Professor Piazza "because there wasn’t even the slightest detail of research he was not familiar with. He was used to following in journals of different countries the new developments in science. As he had lived for many years in scientific institutes and in the wards of the Hospital for Incurables, devoted to the scientific studies and to invalids, everyone was astonished to see this young man of only 36, who in such a short time was reaching the head of the whole medical world in Southern Italy."

Later he was nominated to the following posts: Coadjutor Ordinary, Director of Wards - or Head Physician - of the United Hospitals, Director of the Department for Tuberculosis, Associate of the Royal Academy of Surgery in Naples and, during the war, Director of Military Hospitals.

During that same year of 1911 he went to Vienna to participate in the International Conference on Physiology, together with Professor Quagliariello, who later described the impressions he received of his scientific personality and the authority with which, although so young, he took part in discussions with mature and already celebrated Masters, arousing in them the greatest interest.

Prof.Moscati, in the Incurables Hospital of Naples, during "Great War" 1915-1918

1914. Sad year that gave birth to the First World War. Against the doleful background of this war's commencement, Professor Moscati suffered the most painful wrench of his whole life in the death of his mother.

On 25th November he writes in his diary, "At 5 o'clock in the evening my mother went to heaven, dying as she lived, like a saint". And on 1st January, "Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. With this feast begins the first year since my mother's death." Grief and resignation, detachment and high purpose.

Prof.Moscati, in a detail of the photo at right

24th May 1915. Italy declares war against Austria, and the first Italian soldiers cross the Piave. Eugene Moscati left for the Front. Joseph offered himself for voluntary service. With the rank of Major, he was appointed Head of the Military Department and Director of the office for assistance to wounded or ill soldiers.

He assisted many soldiers, who, together with the most prompt and scrupulous medical treatment, received also the paternal, kindly and intuitive care of his apostolic heart. He spent himself without limit, and without caring about his health, which inevitably began to suffer, and the cost of this excessive labour or of the days spent in the Hospital wards.
In his self-abnegation the greatest comfort was to see the soldiers, as well as profiting from his medical assistance, becoming good and devout, assisting at Mass and receiving the Sacraments.
At last, it came the end of the war, and 1918 saw the blossoming of peace.

Facing his difficult task, he immediately began the reconstruction and economic reorganisation of the Department, which had been rather upset by the war. However, spiritual matters, which had also been much neglected, were very dear to his heart and the first on the programme.
His first care was to have a Crucifix placed on the wall of the autopsy room, where the surroundings were above all depressing and gloomy. Professor Moscati had a Crucifix placed on a wall of the room, very high up, with the inscription beneath, "O death, I will be thy death".

On the day of the inauguration, he invited all the assistants to come to the room. As it was not a day for post mortem to be carried out, they were all very surprised by the invitation, but followed the Professor, who, at the time fixed, was the first to enter.
On the slab nothing, but high up on the wall there was a Crucifix. "We were invited," said Dr.Pio, "to render homage to Christ, to the Life which was returning, after a too long absence, to that place of death".

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