Foucault - The Politics of Health in the 18th Century PDF

The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century (FROM Power/Knowledge) First of all, two preliminary remarks: 1. No doubt it is scarcely fruitful to look for a relation of an­ teriority or dependence between the two terms of a private,...

The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century (FROM Power/Knowledge) First of all, two preliminary remarks: 1. No doubt it is scarcely fruitful to look for a relation of an­ teriority or dependence between the two terms of a private, "liberal" medicine, subject to the mechanisms of individual in­ itiative and laws of the market, and a medical politics, drawing support from structures of power and concerning itself with the health of a collectivity. It is somewhat mythical to suppose that.. Western medicine originated as a collective practice, endowed ; by magico-religious institutions with its social character and ,; gradually dismantled through the subsequent organization of \private clienteles. l But it is equally inadequate to posit the ex­ r" istence at the historical threshold of modern medicine of a sin­ 1 i;gular, private, individual medical relation, "clinical" in its economic 'functioning and epistemological form, and to imagine that a ;:Series of corrections, adjustments, and constraints gradually came ;.:t.o socialize this relatio , ausing it to be to some degree taken ,charge of by the collectivlty. ,?1i What the eighteenth century shows, in any case, is a double­ ;sided process. The development of a medical market in the form ;of private clienteles; the extension of a network o f personnel toffering qualified medical attention; the growth of individual ::and family demand for health care; the emergence of a clinical % ll\edicine strongly centered on individual examination, diag­ ttnosis, and therapy; the explicitly moral and scientific-and se­ :(cretly economic....:....ex altation of "private consultation"; in short,