The watchful gaze in the phenomenon of the hospital as an heritage of modernity

Abstract

This article is an attempt to understand the role of the gaze in the clinical setting, and uses as its main written foundation the book entitled The Birth of the Clinic by Michel Foucault. The concept of clinical gaze has had developed in its double purpose of seeing – knowing. This article aims to show, in a plain and unpretentious style, the shift from the hospital sense to the clinical sense and how this evolution has given medical perception a new meaning, especially as far as the criteria of truth and rationality are concerned.