The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception [Paperback]

Michel Foucault (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 1994

In the eighteenth century, medicine underwent a mutation. For the first 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. And doctors begin to describe phenomena that for centuries had remained below the threshold of the visible and expressible.

In The Birth of the Clinic the philosopher and intellectual historian who may be the true heir to Nietzsche charts this dramatic transformation of medical knowledge. As in his classic Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault shows how much what we think of as pure science owes to social and cultural attitudes -- in this case, to the climate of the French Revolution. Brilliant, provocative, and omnivorously learned, his book sheds new light on the origins of our current notions of health and sickness, life and death.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Learned [and] rewarding...The Birth of the Clinic continues [Foucault's] brilliant history, not of ideas as such, but of the of perception." -- The New York Times Book Review



"The Birth of the Clinic attempts a minor revolution in medical-history writing.... Foucault's research is overwhelming and affords the reader considerable entertainment as well as insight."

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 29, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679753346
• ISBN-13: 978-0679753346
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

One of the leading intellectuals of the twentieth century and the most prominent thinker in post-war France, Foucault's work influenced disciplines as diverse as history, sociology, philosophy, sociology and literary criticism.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sound historical interpretation, hold the postmodernism, May 10, 2002

By 

Henri Edward Dongieux - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Paperback)

Foucault has been interpreted in the US as a pretentious standard-bearer of postmodernism - as an almost "evil" figure who threatens to undermine the foundations of Western knowledge with his problematisation of conceptual categories. It doesn't help that his work has been taken up to justify just about any subversive perspective, whether well-conceived or not. This is only a pitifully small perspective on the man and his work. Foucault should be seen first as a historian, not a philosopher; second, his work should be lauded for the contribution it makes to Western knowledge rather than the superficial "threats" it makes to perspectives whose time has come in any event. Every revolution of perception has been accompanied by vociferous resistance, yet a great many of those sounding their disapproval loudly probably don't really understand what the late Michel was really on to.

The Birth of the Clinic, MF's most accessible work, is a well-researched, brilliantly interpreted account of the development of the clinical "gaze" in the wake of modern medical knowledge and practice. Foucault problematises the institution of the clinic, showing how clinical perception is the result of a historically specific constellation of knowledge and power. His ultimately emancipatory analysis is substantiated every step of the way with textual and historical examples. No metaphysics here, just a radical questioning of the nature of knowledge within institutional practice.

So, sorry (Objectivists!) if this is too much to handle. It's good research, plain and simple. Don't dismiss Foucault as a lightweight postmodernist - try to see him where he would situate himself, in the tradition of reflexive historical sociology.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Structures of Perception and Positivism Questioned, July 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Paperback)

In this short book that forms a worthy companion to his classic "Madness and Civilisation," Michel Foucault first traces the history of medical care from the days when people were usually treated at home by their families, to the early nineteenth century, when public health became a political issue. The outcome of this process was the "clinic," which Foucault defines a field of confinement where those labelled ill, the Other, were monitored and treated to further the reciprocally-linked goals of the health of society and the furtherance of medical knowledge.

Foucault's well-documented narrative concerning the evolving socio-political perception of health and medicine, however, pales in erudition and philosophical significance when compared to the primary thrust of the book ; namely, in detailing how the medical profession ordered and analyzed not only disease, but later the human experience itself. Both seeming to have pushed back the finality ! of death through conjoining to it to the experience of life, and isolating disease not as a phenomenon in itself, but like life and death, simply as a discursive manifestation of visible and invisible symptoms, the medical profession acquired for itself the mantle of positivism that is still basically unquestioned by the public even today.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Again, Foucault shatters our illusions., May 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Paperback)

This book examines our cultural tendency to elevate the authority of the physician. It introduces the concept of the clinical gaze and describes the way the myth of this gaze was developed in the early Enlightenment atmosphere and fostered the birth of the clinic. A detailed online summary by Lois Shawver, with excerpts and page numbers, can be found through some of the standard search engines.