The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception

In the 18th century, medicine underwent a mutation. For the 1st time, medical knowledge took on a precision that had formerly belonged only to mathematics. The body became something that could be mapped. Disease became subject to new rules of classification. Doctors begin to describe phenomena that for centuries had remained below the threshold of the visible & expressible. In The Birth of the Clinic the philosopher & intellectual historian charts this dramatic transformation of medical knowledge. As in his Madness & Civilization, Foucault shows how much what we think of as pure science owes to social & cultural attitudes--in this case, to the climate of the French Revolution. Provocative & learned, his book sheds light on the origins of current notions of health & sickness, life & death.Translator's NotePrefaceSpaces & classesPolitical consciousness Free fieldOld age of the clinicLesson of the hospitalsSigns & cases Seeing & knowingOpen up a few corpsesVisible invisible Crisis in feversConclusionBibliographyIndex