WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 273 



everything in her power to afford them succor in their 

 wants and infirmities. 



It is difficult for us now, when hospitals and charitable 

 institutions of all kinds are so common, to understand what 

 an innovation Fabiola 's unheard-of institution was consid- 

 ered by her contemporaries. For her method of treating 

 the needy and the suffering was as different from that 

 which had hitherto obtained as were the debasing lessons 

 of heathendom from the elevating precepts of the Gospels. 



No wonder that the news of this godlike work was soon 

 wafted to the uttermost bounds of the earth ; that, in the 

 words of St. Jerome, "summer should announce in Britain 

 what Egypt and Parthia had learned in the spring/' No 

 wonder that the same eloquent hermit of Bethlehem should 

 proclaim the foundress of this home of the indigent and 

 the afflicted to be "the glory of the church, the astonish- 

 ment of the Gentiles, the mother of the poor and the con- 

 solation of the saints. ' ' No wonder that, in contemplating 

 her countless acts of charity, he should ignore the fact that 

 Fabiola was a daughter of the Fabii and a descendant of 

 the renowned Quintus Maximus, who, by his sage counsel, 

 had saved his country from her enemies, and that, recalling 

 the words of Virgil, he should declare : ' l If I had a hun- 

 dred tongues and a hundred mouths and iron lungs, I 

 should not be able to enumerate all the maladies to which 

 Fabiola gave the most prodigal care and tenderness to the 

 extent even of making the poor who were in health envy 

 the good fortune of those who were sick. "* No wonder that 

 Fabiola 's funeral, which brought together the whole of 

 Rome, was more like an apotheosis than the transfer of the 

 remains of the deceased to their last resting-place, and that 

 Jerome should declare, "the glory of Furius and Papirius 



i ' ' Non mihi si linguae centum, oraque centum, f errea vox . . . 

 omnia morborum pereurrere nomina possim quse Fabiola in tanta 

 miserorum refregeria commutavit ut multi pauperum sani languenti- 

 bus inviderent. ' ' Epistola ad Oceanum. 



