So what's the point of The Birth of the Clinic (except as a means for Foucault to use as many commas, semicolons, and colons as is grammatically possible)? Did Foucault just have a few years to kill in the medical archive while he taught French at Upsalla, Sweden? What the hell does all this mean anyway?

Okay, relax. Here's what I think the major take home points of The Birth of the Clinic are:

Foucault is using The Birth of the Clinic to demonstrate his specific historical methodology: the archaeology of knowledge

 

Foucault is using The Birth of the Clinic to undermine the traditional belief that the history of the scientific medical practice has always been a constant and homogeneous process of accretion of knowledge

 

Foucault is using The Birth of the Clinic to trace the development and importance of the medical gaze

 

Foucault is using The Birth of the Clinic to develop his specific notion of how the medical gaze positions the private space of the individual body as an object within the power structure of the public medical discipline