>>2659646as we may read from the preface of madness and civilisation (1961), foucault designates an historical relationship between reason and madness, which begins its proper distinction in the medieval era, up to modernity. he highlights that the antique į½Ī²ĻĪ¹Ļ (hubris) featured as a motif, but as yet was only countered by reason, not by medicine.
in the first chapter, he notes the establishment of "lazar houses" (medieval hospitals) which primarily treated lepers, forming "leper colonies" as a segregated mass (it should be remembered that Jesus interacted with lepers, to include the sick). as foucault writes - in time, leprosy was gone, but the architecture of "treatment" remained:
<Often, in these same places, the formulas of exclusion would be repeated, strangely similar two or three centuries later. Poor vagabonds, criminals, and "deranged minds" would take the part played by the leper, and we shall see what salvation was expected from this exclusion, for them and for those who excluded them as well.these criteria of exclusion becomes formalised as right of separation by the advent of "mental illness" as foucault further states, highlighting the "general hospital" (1656) as part of this architecture, which routinely targeted the poor, such as beggars (this great "confinement" of the poor he notes, in its military ambitions to enslave populations). marx also discusses this in part (capital vol. 1, ch. 28) where the dispossessed where institutionalised as criminals, disciplined by vagabond acts and factory work. thus, the primary exclusion of the sick extends to the poor as disciplinary action in a class society. psychiatry and american chattle slavery emerge around the same time, proving its capitalist essence, as a means to "other" and subject them to "correction" (e.g. conformity to wage labour). as yet, foucault sees how renaissance romance frames a "forbidden" wisom in madness, stained by oblivion (this theme continues today, archetypally). indeed, the sage is mad, like the shaman. Jesus was mad, which is why he was killed.
in the second chapter, he sees how the prior "praise of folly" (1509) is outmoded for systematic "confinement" by the generalisation of medicine in its task to exclude, silence and regulate the other. the general hospital in itself begins as semi-judiciary; as a court with solemn judgement:
<In its functioning, or in its purpose, the Hopital General had nothing to do with any medical concept. It was an instance of order, of the monarchical and bourgeois order being organized in France during this period.these institutions spread all over france. foucault also discusses england:
<In England the origins of confinement are more remote. An act of 1575 covering both "the punishment of vagabonds and the relief of the poor" prescribed the construction of houses of correction, to number at least one per county.the same as what marx describes. these houses of "correction" spread all across europe, as "the great confinement" spread:
<We must not forget that a few years after its foundation, the Hopital General of Paris alone contained six thousand persons, or around one per cent of the population.these are similar numbers to the private prison system of the USA today, which has the largest prison population in the world. foucault further speaks on primitive accumulation:
<In 1532, the Parlement of Paris decided to arrest beggars and force them to work in the sewers of the city, chained in pairs.thus, the punishment for crime was work.
as foucault comments from this chapter:
<Between labor and idleness in the classical world ran a line of demarcation that replaced the exclusion of leprosy. The asylum was substituted for the lazar house, in the geography of haunted places as in the landscape of the moral universe. The old rites of excommunication were revived, but in the world of production and commerce.thus, the confined bear resemblance to the slave, in his manner of "ennoblement"…
so this is a basic introduction to foucault.
hopefully you find curiosity in the content.