The Birth of the Clinic by Michel Foucault

The Birth of the Clinic is the second piece of the An Archaeology of medical perception by Michel Foucault. In this Foucault discusses his approach to the development of diseases, and medical sciences and theories throughout the creation of the medical clinic in the nineteenth century.

In the article it states how this new generation is detaching from the previous realization that pathology is not of the norm but now self evident and essential for discovery to go beyond looking at visible symptoms to define disease. This nineteenth century period was best know for the advances in pathological anatomy and coined establishment of the term gaze, which described in the text as the act of looking or gazing by a doctor where the patient is dehumanized and becomes an object that lacks personality. With this gaze doctors can become aware of a deep space that is anterior to all perceptions to find the disease that is embodied in a living organism compared to a visible symptom on the exterior.

Foucault states four principles of primary configuration of a disease. First being that the doctors in the eighteenth century identified with “historical” as opposed to philosophical, “knowledge” which is not distinct by cause and effect but a classificatory system on the attribution and effect. The second principle states, “It is a space in which analogies define essences”. In this diseases are measured on degree of resemblance. The third principle states the form of the similarity uncovers the rational order of the disease, meaning when similarities are discovered a rational schedule for that disease occurs. The fourth is we deal with species that are both natural and ideal. Natural cause diseases state essential truths and ideal because they never are unchanged and undisturbed.

Throughout this attempt to exercise the importance of the ‘gaze’, the clinic was the first to put into action and recognize signs and symptoms of a disease. The article discusses the differences in the clinic and hospital. In the clinic the doctor deals with the disease affecting the patient, and in the hospital the doctors look only toward the disease. The teaching hospitals undergo a new format of teaching including the grids of specification, the gaze, and experience with language and practice. Medical science also took on another form, which included the study of the dead, not only the ill or the diseased. Death was not the end of life but end of the disease, which encouraged the pathology of the dead body to see the presence of the disease.