(no subject)

[timelets]

The first structure provided by classificatory medicine is the flat surface of perpetual simultaneity. Table and picture.
2. It is a space in which analogies define essences. The pictures resemble things, but they also resemble one another. The distance that separates one disease from another can be measured only by the degree of their resemblance, without reference to the logicotemporal divergence of genealogy.

--- Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic.

Interesting. We can think about disease descriptions at the time as missing the third dimension, i.e. internal organs. But even before that, they necessarily had to come up with the concept of a specific disease, instead of an imbalance of humors. In any case, for therapeutical purposes, knowing organs associated with a particular disease didn't make much difference.

By association, today's treatment of the economy resembles the ancient theory of humors, with money being the equivalent of blood.