Ebook: The Birth of the Clinic (Routledge Classics)

The Birth of the Clinic is an exciting and original study of the birth of modern medicine that parallels Foucault's now classic Madness and Civilization in which he charted the history of men's attitudes towards and treatment of those designated as insane. Here Foucault examines the origins of modern clinical medicine, concentrating his full attention on the turning point itself, on the relatively few years at the turn of the eighteenth century that saw one of those rapid and total transformations in the epistemological basis of men's thinking. Many of the most basic ideas of modern medicine about the nature of health and sickness, about what life is, and what death should be, were formulated during this pivotal period. With his usual combination of brilliant insight and wealth of erudition, Foucault lays bare the ways in which medical theory and practice responded.