The Surveillance In Michel Foucault's The Birth Of The Clinic

Well-known philosopher Michel Foucault wrote a book called ‘The Birth of the Clinic (1973)’, the main idea behind the book is that Foucault trails how medical knowledge was transferred by scientific methods in the eighteenth century. He recorded that the doctors based their treatments on observation of the patients symptoms rather than referencing books to analyse the type of disease the patient may have. Through observation, Foucault was able to develop the concept of ‘surveillance’ whereby, patients would go for regular check-ups to get analysed and find out if they were healthy or diseased. Keeping in mind back in the old days, they created a false ideological truth about people who were abnormal. These people were seen to be possessed by the devil because
This was a signifier of the important influence for new techniques of disciplinary technology which lead to surveillance. Foucault wrote a book ‘Discipline and Punish’, where he used Bentham’s design as an argument of knowledge and power. “The panopticon brings together power, control of the body, control of groups and knowledge (The inmate is observed and examined systematically in his cell).” [1]Foucault explains the use of the panopticon, the controller from the middle tower is able to see the individual inmates in their cells. He later in his book goes on to say, “The Panopticon is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.”[2, page 202] What he meant by this is, where ever you put the panopticon to use it can be in prison or in schools, the power will act in a certain way within it. Each person who is held within it, are constantly in the watchful eyes of the observer and are kept isolated. The reason why it is marvellous is because the concept is unusual as well as clever, whereby one single person is able to overpower many