Why she studied medicine: ... We are at the close of the nineteenth century, and here is a bouquet of dear girls studying at the English school. One of them approaches a companion whose eyes are brimming with tears: — What is the matter, Fatima? — My mother is sick...
— Fetch her a doctor... — A doctor... when she is a woman? — Then fetch a lady doctor! — Do you suppose we have women doctors?
That night our girl did not sleep. She lay on her bed in the dark, lost in dreaming: Why should I not study medicine? How wonderful if I were to become a doctor! And Anis Barakat was still thinking and reckoning... when the face of morning appeared!...
Where to study medicine?: She looked about with ambitious eyes in every direction and found the doors of hope shut... The institutions of higher learning in Lebanon could not yet stomach the idea of mixing the sexes, least of all in the field of medicine. And there were those who doubted woman's very capacity even to enter that door... How powerless she was — a meek girl — to
persuade them otherwise and to erase their doubts!! She turned her great hope toward the West... "In America is the launching-place of my hopes," she said, "but how am I to travel alone?!" The young girl smothered her dreams in her breast and waited patiently — or it was as if the fates willed to serve her, for one forenoon she found herself sailing in the company of a sister of hers named Martha, whom her husband Constantine Makna had summoned to join him... That was in 1901.
In America: In the New World, after a year of searching, the young Lebanese woman set down her baggage in
Detroit, Michigan. There she spent four years devouring her studies and commanding the respect of her fellow students, who elected her class secretary and delegated her to represent them at the congress of university students... And the university gave her a scholarship for one year in recognition of her excellence and diligence. In 1905, Anis Barakat mounted the platform, her head held high, her heart and eye dancing... Behold, her dream come true!! Here is the diploma of medicine in the grip of her hand!!
... And there was a second night she passed in sleeplessness... It is the restlessness of great souls... it is her ambition widening... her little head ringing with sweet hopes!!
Specialization was a must: She buttoned her white gown, rolled up its sleeves, and forgot herself in the flood of learning, adding to her experience and knowledge... She moved from hospital to hospital, between New York and Philadelphia, and at last, one day, announced her readiness to return to her homeland and serve its children... She was the first
Lebanese woman doctor... She specialized, naturally, in women's medicine. Had not her coming been, from the very beginning, for that end?! And she went back again in 1923, after her marriage, for another year of specialization in Paris.
Over and above all this, Dr. Anis Barakat wished to stand alone in something, so she also specialized in "Homio Pathitique" — that is, treating chronic diseases by medicating their symptoms — and she won wide fame through this specialty, unique of its kind...
Here she is at last in Beirut: We are with
