Woman: Body and Soul

"Woman: Body and Soul" is the title of a new book by Dr. Georges Hanna, prefaced by both Mr. Said Takieddine and Dr. Spiridon Abu al-Rous. Here Dr. Saniyya Habboub Nakkash comments on it, having read it before it put on its plumage.

I met my friend Dr. Georges Hanna, and there he was, carrying under his arm the best thing a human being can carry. He saw me looking at him with some curiosity, and said:

— It is a newborn whose appearance is at hand. This is a book about woman, but it has not yet completed its nine months; it still needs a week for its binding to be finished and for it to put on its beautiful outer garment.

I stretched out my hand toward it, saying:

— I see that labor has begun, and there is no harm if we hurry matters along and draw it out with the forceps...

And so it was granted me to read the book before it was published to the people, before it put on its attractive plumage and flew to the bookshop windows. Despite my little practice in writing, I felt after reading it a need driving me to share with others the delight and pleasure that had filled me.

What I say about the book "Woman: Body and Soul" is neither a study nor a critique; it is merely a sincere feeling that imprinted itself on my soul after reading a book I admired, valued, and loved.

God bless Dr. Georges Hanna! He was not content with serving woman and easing her burden in the most critical hours of her life for more than thirty years; he was not content with tending her and caring for her in pregnancy and childbirth — he has come with this book, passing from the particular to the general, gathering the fruits of his long experience and rendering to the Arab woman everywhere a public service in the field of medicine and society.

Nor does Dr. Hanna appear as an ordinary champion of woman; he is a fierce fighter in her cause. He has known her at close quarters — known her in depth, if you will — and many of society's illusions have been shattered on the rock of knowledge. Woman is no longer, in his eyes, a doll to be toyed with, nor an instrument for cooking, nor a factory for children. She is a complete creature who feels and reasons, and in her body, wrongly branded with weakness, there is latent strength surpassing the capacity of men. The privilege of fertility with which nature has singled her out, and the sacrifices this privilege demands in pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing, are proof of the strength and blessedness of her constitution.

But she is not body alone, as was the prevailing opinion in Europe during the Middle Ages. She has a soul; she has a brain, like man. She is therefore his peer — not made from his rib, and not less than he in anything. She was created as he was created and developed as he developed, and no obstacles stood in her way save those which man erected in injustice and aggression.

Happily, the age of science and light is witnessing the collapse of these obstacles. The more civilization advances in any country, the more men's eyes open to the truth of woman, and they look upon her as equal looks upon equal. There is no doubt that the appearance in our country of a vanguard of men like Dr. Georges Hanna is a herald of good for our progress and our eagerness to keep pace with the caravan of civilization. Whenever man brings himself to honor his mother, respect his wife, and value his daughter and his sister, he proves that he is a civilized human being worthy of the dear, good, flourishing life.

And though our friend is distinguished by a revolutionary spirit, and his temperament inclines to violence in the struggle — so much so that he sometimes goes to extremes in his demands and hurls at society opinions that fall upon it like bombs, such as his call to accept girl-mothers within the fold of religious and civil law, in which we do not endorse him — do not suppose that the book is merely a fierce social campaign. It contains many pages filled with scientific counsel which every girl and woman would do well to read and profit from in her private life, during the sacred stage of motherhood. And these pages are free of dryness, for the man of letters and the philosopher who stir in the author's soul never cease to walk beside the physician at every step he takes.

Read this book, Arab girl, for it is a testimony from men to your right and your merit. I said "from men" because Dr. Hanna has joined to his ample testimony two short testimonies from two men besides himself: the testimony of a great man of letters, Sheikh Said Takieddine, and the testimony of a great physician, Professor Abu al-Rous. And I shall not say, "true merit is that to which the enemies bear witness"... for men are our friends; they are our sons, our husbands, and our brothers. Ignorance is the root of estrangement, and the more they come to know us, and we to know them, by the light of true science, the firmer grow the bonds of love, familiarity, and understanding between us and them — and together we shall march on to build a better society.