Dr. Edma Abouchdid in her elegant salon
... Of the earliest vanguard: Dr. Edma Abouchdid. The first girl to mount the platform of the American University of Beirut to receive the diploma of medicine... Between that era and our own day she has covered long stretches in the fields of specialization and of renown. From medicine's branching fields she chose the field of woman, and in its cause she traveled to New York, then to Paris and London, seeking out the newest that science has attained, to ease the role of motherhood, to explore its obstacles and its secrets, and to raise woman up in all the stages of her life — sound of body and mind, worthy of watching tenderly over the offspring: the hope of tomorrow...
Dr. Edma Abouchdid's name shone forth after years of practice in Baghdad, and on her fell the choice of the Lebanese government to represent her country at the world congress on sterility... She is now a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the American University of Beirut, apart from her flourishing activity in her private clinic.
Beside this excellence in the field of medicine, Dr. Abouchdid has all the qualities of the complete "lady." Her home — every corner of it — is a model of refined elegance. Her hands are of gold, working at the prompting of her mind and her taste, and never wearying: between sewing and cooking and the arranging of flowers — what art of the modern home does this much-occupied doctor not master?? Do not ask me how her time can suffice... every minute of her life is accounted for, and none is squandered. Is she not, after all, a woman who is a pride to our world... and an example?
It pleases us to record here with Dr. Edma Abouchdid a talk on "Woman After Forty" — and who is fitter than she to treat this delicate subject? Let us listen as she says: "The phrase 'middle age' has vanished from the modern woman's lexicon."
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Q — What is the cause of the fear and despair that take possession of a woman's soul after the age of forty?
A — There are several causes, the chief among them