ABSTRACT
In a section called ‘Panopticism’ in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975, translated in 1977), Foucault gives a succinct account of how in early modern society leprosy and the plague – both highly contagious diseases – were dealt with. Lepers were simply excluded from social intercourse to minimize the risk of infection. However, with regard to the plague, which always affected large numbers of the population, other measures were necessary. And so seventeenth-century society did its utmost to contain the plague through confining people to their houses, once the disease had manifested itself.
