• A poem recited at the ceremony of honor held by the administration of the Hamlin Sanatorium on the occasion of the passing of fifty years since Dr. Ni'meh Nakhoul began the practice of medicine, particularly in the field of pulmonary tuberculosis. The sanatorium has given Dr. Nakhoul's name to one of its modern buildings, and His Excellency the Lebanese Minister of Health — deputizing for His Excellency the President of the Republic — pinned the Order of the Cedar upon the breast of the honoree in recognition of his services to science and the country.

In measure with a man's usefulness his rank ascends,

and his stars shine in the horizon of glory;

And God confers upon him honor and strength,

so that no fault can climb to reach him.

Whoever seeks to veil the sun from a beholder's eye,

his effort and his toil scatter into dust;

And whoever cannot tell light from darkness

is blind — his morning and his glooms are one;

And whoever would deny the favors of a blessing

is an envier, feeble of mind, whose word is a lie.

A physician who reached the utmost of skill,

as his virtues reached the utmost in noble deeds,

He spent half a century in the struggle, fighting on,

wrestling a disease that had found none to wrestle it:

Now he experiments, and now he studies,

so that his experiments are built on solid rock.

He took the monk's vows in the cloister of consumption, and came away,

its monk having razed that veiled cloister;

And he begot a lion's cub who does not flinch

when troubles strike one day, or hardships follow fast —

You see him, young in years, bearing a burden

under which, laid on a man of ripe age, the shoulders would sag.

He has a scalpel — let him but shake it in his right hand

and you know for certain the disease's battalions have fled.

God keep you — what an able, seasoned healer,

whose gifts were revealed at their very loftiest!

You became a place of pilgrimage, whose counsel is sought

by the foreigners of a rising East and by its Arabs;

And that disease became easy to lead,

though it had been a tyrant whose flank men shunned.

From across the seas a testimonial came to you,

owning that the sound judgment is yours;

And the rulers valued in you virtues

by which you are known — and merit makes its owner known:

They gave — and made no boast of the giving — a jeweled decoration;

blessed be its giver, and blessed be he who sought it.

Though they added no height to your eminence,

they honored the part that you are playing.

And the missionaries found in you a culture

that radiates like a horizon adorned by its piercing stars,

So they raised a building that bears your name immortal,

and what its writer set down shall not be effaced until the Gathering.

My friend and my teacher — yours be the whole of life,

for you have grown wise in its afflictions and its calamities;

And may you live content of eye, delighting in what

the Lord bestowed upon you, and in what you yourself have earned.

If the jubilee has gladdened us, golden as it is,

then your centennial to come we fondle with longing.

Dr. Habib Shehadeh