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Embodying the Patient: Records and Bodies in Early 20th-century US Medical PracticeDepartment of Social-Medical Sciences at the Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Department of Health Ethics and Philosophy at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands This article discusses the emergence of the modern body, as portrayed by Foucault, in early 20th-century medical practice. Specifically, this article argues how the coming of the patient-centered record in the United States was a pivotal event in this emergence. We argue how the shape and functions that the record acquired during this period was fundamentally intertwined with the new shape that both the patient’s body and medical institutions acquired. We zoom in on two specific examples: the re-historizing and subjectifying of the body, both afforded by new record-keeping practices. The topic addressed here is the embodying of the patient: the production of a patient with a body whose characteristics are the effect of the interrelation of the patient with a growing number of professionals and investigative instruments, and with a medical record which becomes more and more significant in these interrelations.
Key Words: embodiment • Foucault • history of medicine • medical record • patient-centered medicine
Body & Society, Vol. 10, No. 2-3,
13-41 (2004) |
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