The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception

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Yet, Foucault moves on a philosophical plane with his books, and there are certain rules you have to abide by if you want to play this game. For starters, there is the justification of claims. Foucault makes radical claims but he does not argue for them. He describes how different ways of seeing the world and speaking about it follow up one another; he describes how doctors viewed disease, life, death, etc. at each particular time. But describing is not explaining. And this is, of course, on purpose: Foucault is heavily inspired by phenomenology. Originally developed by Edmund Husserl it is a method of doing philosophy through describing how phenomena appear in themselves and leaving it at that. Supposedly, this circumvents the (age old) problem of explain the relationship between these phenomena and the consciousness observing them. But it handicaps the philosopher significantly, since it is impossible to argue for any position since it is simply description. By what right can one transform into an object of clinical observation a pacient whose poverty has compelled him to seek assistance at the hospital? In "Reading Capital" Althusser defines philosophical work as an intervention in science, an exposing of what the object of a science is. "The Birth of the Clinic" is a philosophical work in this sense. the development of clinical medicine, of pathology (this part is quite tenuous to read especially if you are a doctor and know the actual state of the arts. because those whole "ancient" theories about tissues and diseases are nowadays outdated, you can read them and think of them as medical dystopies (HAHAHA). Nevertheless, the reasons for inventing the stethoscope are quite funny (as the doctor was not allowed to put his ear on the woman's chest)

We must place ourselves, and remain once and for all, at the level of the fundamental spatialization and verbalization of the pathological, where the loquacious gaze with which the doctor observes the poisonous heart of things is born and communes with itself” (xii-xiii). This medical experience is therefore akin even to a lyrical experience that his language sought, from Hölderlin to Rilke. This experience, which began in the eighteenth century, and from which we have not yet escaped, is bound up with a return to the forms of finitude, of which death is no doubt the most menacing, but also the fullest. Hölderlin’s Empedocles, reaching, by voluntary steps, the very edge of Etna, is the death of the last mediator between mortals and Olympus, the end of the infinite on earth, the flame returning to its native fire, leaving as its sole remaining trace that which had precisely to be abolished by his death: the beautiful, enclosed form of individuality; after Empedocles, the world is placed under the sign of finitude, in that irreconcilable, intermediate state in which reigns the Law, the harsh law of limit; the destiny of individuality will be to appear always in the objectivity that manifests and conceals it, that denies it and yet forms its basis: ‘here, too, the subjective and the objective exchange faces.’ Patient attributes and environmental factors became relevant considerations in discerning diseases. Furthermore, political changes stemming from the French Revolution ceded power over health matters to the new government, which it promptly transferred to the doctors. Society would now have a point of view on what constitutes health, a view the gaze could not escape. This gaze focused on health as it concerned a “benefit to the state.” Not until later yet in the nineteenth-century would the gaze shift towards deviations from established norms of health, when, in other words, the gaze was redirected from what Foucault calls the social space to the pathological space. This particular shift for him marked a transformation of classificatory medicine to clinical medicine. Landon MB, et al. Normal labor and delivery. In: Gabbe's Obstetrics: Normal and Problem Pregnancies. 8th ed. Elsevier; 2021. http://www.clinicalkey.com. Accessed Oct. 28, 2021. In that light, the empiricism of the 18th and 19th centuries was not a dispassionate act of looking, noting, and reporting the disease presented before the doctor's eyes. The relationship between doctor and patient (subject and object) is not about the one who knows and the one who tells, because doctor–patient interactions are not "mindless phenomenologies" that existed before their consultation (medical discourse) as patient and doctor. [6] Clinical medicine came to exist as part of the intellectual structure that defines and organises medicine as "the domain of its experience and the structure of its rationality" as a field of knowledge. [7]

Nevertheless, there are also very interesting parts, which, as a doctor for human medicine, i appreciated a lot. How long it lasts: Active labor often lasts 4 to 8 hours or more. On average, your cervix will dilate at approximately 1 cm an hour. Thus, the medical—classificatory—gaze during this period was confined to signs and symptoms such that “paradoxically, in relation to that which he is suffering from, the patient is only an external fact; the medical reading must take him into account only to place him in parentheses” (p. 8). As a result, judgments about a patient’s condition could draw only from similarities and differences among sets of signs and symptoms laid out in pre-determined patterns—this sign goes here, that symptom goes there. Time and space have no role; never first this, then that, or here this, there that. The Shifting Gaze

If you need to have a Cesarean delivery (C-section), having food in your stomach can lead to complications. If your health care provider thinks you might need a C-section, he or she might recommend small amounts of clear liquids, such as water, ice chips, popsicles and juice, instead of solid foods. How long it lasts: Early labor is unpredictable. For first-time moms, the average length varies from hours to days. It's often shorter for subsequent deliveries.

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If you're having an uncomplicated pregnancy, you may spend most of your early labor at home until your contractions start to increase in frequency and intensity. Your health care provider will instruct you on when to leave for the hospital or birthing center. If your water breaks or you experience significant vaginal bleeding, call your health care provider right away. Active labor The history of illness to which he is reduced is necessary to his fellow men because it teaches them by what ills they are threatened.