[Henry Foley and Lyautey, and the medical activities in Morocco during the initial phase of the protectorate]

In June 1912, Lyautey was called to Marocco as "Résident général". His first decision, before his arrival in Marocco, at Fès, was to require an important additional quota of physicians. He received each of them, in order to verify their moral and professional capacity to assume their charge. Lyautey knew that he must contribute to the modernization and development of this very old, fascinating and glorious nation, which was no longer suited to the modern time. Among the necessary and urgent actions, the medical one seemed to be the more important. Lyautey had found with Henry Foley, all the essential qualities to manage the medical assistance service for marocan populations. But Foley refused to be with Lyautey in Marocco, because he was working in the saharian city of Beni-Ounif, on different subjects as exanthematous typhus, recurrent fever ... He had discovered in 1908, the role of lice in the transmission of recurrent fever in Beni-Ounif, one year before the discovery of this role in exanthematic typhus by Charles Nicolle. But the relation proved by not yet published correspondence, was not broken off between Foley and Lyautey.