Madness and Civilization explores two major canonical events in the transition from medieval to modern social structures. The first is the differentiation of criminals, paupers, and the insane. The second is the relationship between the insane and the agency responsible for treating them. However, in typical Foucaultian style the book elliptically skips around these main topics, instead focusing on 18th century nosgraphies between hysteria and mania and melancholia, and the various humoral theories that underlay those now entirely discredited theories. The closing thoughts, the idea that the psychiatrist is essentially a moral shaman, and that madness serves as the dark mirror to enlightment rationality, lack the scholarly hitting power of the Panopticon or Biopower. So far, the least essential Foucault I've read.