Examination
Today I learned about examination.
Foucault, Michel. 1995 [1975]. Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison. Translated by A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
Examination of the body uses a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to classify bodies and to create solvable problems. In order to enact a cure, a problem must be drawn from a pool of known problems that have known solutions. The act of examining uses vision to differentiate and to judge. Kellogg did this with his patients by performing an entrance examination upon their arrival at the sanitarium. When guests checked in, they muddied their role as guests into the role of a guest-patient with a problem. The economy of the sanitarium relied on the existence of a problem: if one were not diagnosed immediately, they would have to be sent home, their fee refunded. Kellogg's examination techniques probed the internal invisible geography of bodies - a mass of organs, flesh, and food cum poision - by measuring and quantifying the dimensions and weights of the internal objects of the digestive system. Examination is highly ritualized in two ways: the ceremony of power performed by the doctor, and the potential for experiment. Healing takes the form of experiment because, from the doctor's point of view, the solution to each labeled problem will have a different outcome. Again, from the doctor's point of view, this is the treadmill of progress. At the moment he thinks that all problems can be aligned with a reliable solution, in comes a person with a new problem, or for whom the old reliable solution does not work. Hence, the ritual of experimentation, and the never-ending process of reclassification of bodies and cures.
The Hospital as an examining apparatus.
The ritual of the visit.
The old form of inspection in the 18th century was irregular and rapid. The doctor in this period was one of many visitors to an ill person. This was transformed into "a regular observation that placed the patient in a situation of almost perpetual examination."
Foucault, Michel. 1995 [1975]. Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison. Translated by A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
Examination of the body uses a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to classify bodies and to create solvable problems. In order to enact a cure, a problem must be drawn from a pool of known problems that have known solutions. The act of examining uses vision to differentiate and to judge. Kellogg did this with his patients by performing an entrance examination upon their arrival at the sanitarium. When guests checked in, they muddied their role as guests into the role of a guest-patient with a problem. The economy of the sanitarium relied on the existence of a problem: if one were not diagnosed immediately, they would have to be sent home, their fee refunded. Kellogg's examination techniques probed the internal invisible geography of bodies - a mass of organs, flesh, and food cum poision - by measuring and quantifying the dimensions and weights of the internal objects of the digestive system. Examination is highly ritualized in two ways: the ceremony of power performed by the doctor, and the potential for experiment. Healing takes the form of experiment because, from the doctor's point of view, the solution to each labeled problem will have a different outcome. Again, from the doctor's point of view, this is the treadmill of progress. At the moment he thinks that all problems can be aligned with a reliable solution, in comes a person with a new problem, or for whom the old reliable solution does not work. Hence, the ritual of experimentation, and the never-ending process of reclassification of bodies and cures.
The Hospital as an examining apparatus.
The ritual of the visit.
The old form of inspection in the 18th century was irregular and rapid. The doctor in this period was one of many visitors to an ill person. This was transformed into "a regular observation that placed the patient in a situation of almost perpetual examination."
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