This is one of those books in which it feels like the author is intentionally obscure -- almost in a self-aggrandizing way. To use one of Foucault's favorite (or at least most frequent) criticisms against others (in this text), this book is needlessly prolix; he throws that word around like it's going out of style. Oh, wait.

In it, Foucault examines the emergence of the clinic as a teaching hospital as opposed to a hospital intended solely to cure the sick. If you're going to tackle this work, you're going to need a decent amount of outside reading, knowledge of obscure 17th to 19th century medical practices, a decent latin dictionary, and a rudimentary working knowledge of French (occasionally, when a word in English can have more than one French word that it is translated from, the translator will put the English word, and the original French word in order to clarify... it's helpful to know the meaning of the original French word). If you can't do all that, at least be a Google master.

Plan to spend at least a little time looking up Bichat, Pinel, Sauvages, and a host of other medical figures in order to understand what's happening in this book and why he references these figures.

Real genius would have been to write this book in a less pompous, more straightforward way.

This book isn't a skip in the park. You have been warned.