Whenever chance brings me together with someone and he learns the specialty to which I have devoted myself, he smiles a singular smile — half bashfulness and half strangeness — and says: — So you doctor the mad? And I say in answer to his ques-tion: — No, my dear fellow; I doctor the sick. Signs of astonishment mount his face, and he looks as though he had not grasped what I mean, or understood what I am driving at; and so I go on speaking, explaining to him the truth of my specialty and its nature. I tell him how people, ever since they appeared on the face of the earth, have concerned them-selves with themselves and taken note of the abnormal-ity that comes over them and over their behavior. There is no doubt that the first of the human race realized from the very beginning that some people are stricken by some-thing strange and obscure, which alters their conduct, twists their thoughts, and works upon their deeds and their behavior; and they noticed at the same time that these stricken persons for the most part complain of no evident ailment, no visible bodily defect. And so the truth of the matter was hidden from them, and they went searching for various interpretations and explana-tions of those strange phe-nomena; and these inquiries of theirs were far removed from matter and what arises from it, inclined, naturally enough, toward spiritual and metaphysical concerns. People in that epoch of human evolution believed that the world is full of spirits, and that these spirits

are of two kinds: a kind that is all goodness and benefit, and a kind that is all evil and harm. They believed, too, that both kinds are able to work upon man — upon his mind and upon his body alike — and therefore they held that if there appeared in one of them an unpraise-worthy conduct, contrary to custom and usage and opposed to the prevailing religious, social, and polit-ical beliefs, they concluded that the person was under the sway of one of the spirits of evil. And they called these spirits devils and demons, or jinn. But if there appeared in someone a praiseworthy conduct, conforming to the custom and usage then prevailing, and agreeing in particular with the religious, social, and political teachings, then the spirit ruling over him in that case, as they believed, was a spirit of goodness and blessing. And to these spirits they gave the name of angels. And who among us does not know all this?... But what concerns us in this account is that these views were, and still are, spread far and wide among the common run of people; and in the past they were the first foundations upon which the men of religion — and some physicians as well — built their teachings concerning those stricken with mental illnesses. These strange beliefs had a far-reaching effect upon the course of psychiatry and its evolu-tion. If we turn to the other branches of medicine, we notice that they were, on the whole, earlier than psychiatry in evolution and

The whisper of a Palestinian girl, inspired by Legislative Decree No. 6, which grants the educated Lebanese woman her political rights, full and undiminished.

The breezes blow, gentle and soft, and stir the bells with rapture; and the birds come rejoicing, singing, and settle on a jasmine that has crowded up against a rose at my window... and a joyous melody flows from the mingling of chime and birdsong... a melody that is glad tidings — and I ask, from where? And the answer comes, and in it is the sweetness of the mountain, the clearness of the springs among its folds, and the awe of the cedars upon its shoulder; in it is the pride of woman now made whole, and her smile now made equal... in it are a thousand and one meanings! And I raise my eyes to heaven, and in them is a tear such as they have not known since they came to be... Enough for it that it gathers the two opposites: joy and release, sorrow and suppression... enough for it that it tells the tale of a soul that hopes in the measure of its misery, that exists in the measure of its nothingness — a refugee soul!... Who am I, O my Lord? I feel and I think... so I exist; but who feels my existence, who watches over me? From whom shall I take my rights? From what patch of the earth? From what people in all existence — "from where?" And the answer comes, and in it is the bitterness of despair, the silence of the bells in the sky of my country, and the desolation of life along its roads... Would that I knew from where!