Central Laboratory at Rabat. This is a kind
of Pasteur Institute. In 1917, 210,000 persons
were vaccinated throughout the country and 356 patients
treated at the Laboratory for rabies.
Clinics for venereal diseases have been established
at Casablanca, Fez, Rabat, and Marrakech.
More than 15,000 cases were treated in 1917.
Ophthalmic clinics in the same cities gave
in 1917, 44,600 consultations.
Radiotherapy. Clinics have been opened at Fez
and Rabat for the treatment of skin diseases of the
head, from which the native children habitually suffer.
The French Department of Health distributes annually
immense quantities of quinine in the malarial districts.
Madame Lyautey’s private charities comprise
admirably administered child-welfare centres in the
principal cities, with dispensaries for the native
mothers and children.
A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY
[NOTE—In the chapters on Moroccan history
and art I have tried to set down a slight and superficial
outline of a large and confused subject. In extenuation
of this summary attempt I hasten to explain that its
chief merit is its lack of originality.
Its facts are chiefly drawn from the books mentioned
in the short bibliography at the end of the volume,
in addition to which I am deeply indebted for information
given on the spot to the group of remarkable specialists
attached to the French administration, and to the cultivated
and cordial French officials, military and civilian,
who, at each stage of my rapid journey, did their
best to answer my questions and open my eyes.]
THE BERBERS
In the briefest survey of the Moroccan past, account
must first of all be taken of the factor which, from
the beginning of recorded events, has conditioned
the whole history of North Africa: the existence,
from the Sahara to the Mediterranean, of a mysterious
irreducible indigenous race with which every successive
foreign rule, from Carthage to France, has had to
reckon, and which has but imperfectly and partially
assimilated the language, the religion, and the culture
that successive civilizations have tried to impose
upon it.
This race, the race of Berbers, has never, modern
explorers tell us, become really Islamite, any more
than it ever really became Phenician, Roman or Vandal.
It has imposed its habits while it appeared to adopt
those of its invaders, and has perpetually represented,
outside the Ismalitic and Hispano-Arabic circle of
the Makhzen, the vast tormenting element of the dissident,
the rebellious, the unsubdued tribes of the Blad-es-Siba.
Who were these indigenous tribes with whom the Phenicians,
when they founded their first counting-houses on the
north and west coast of Africa, exchanged stuffs and
pottery and arms for ivory, ostrich-feathers and slaves?
