The Patient Question: [When does the subject who goes to the hospital to be
cured change? Who is going to hospitals? When and why? What kind of persons do we have on hospital beds? When are they 'patients'?]
Subject of Medicine Question: [When does the subject begin to be defined by these
medical records? When are persons, and
not just patients, medicalized? Relatedly,
when do medical records become privileged?]
Medical Records Questions: [When do medical records begin to be preserved within
hospitals? Standardized to an extent so they can be distributed between
different hospitals? Summarizable so
they can be extended to other domains/practices (i.e., medical records used in
education, in criminal court, in insurance contracts, in epidemeology)? These other domains/practices might be a
possible entry in.]
Technical function of medical records technology: [Who is compiling the medical records? Nurses?
Medical secretaries? What is their knowledge, role, and technological function? Training
manuals as a possible entry in.]
Framing Question: What literature should our analysis be framed through? Who is our audience? What disciplines and/or journals do we want to speak to?
One possible hunch (but just a hunch at this point): [If the medicalization of the hospital was an effect/strategy (?) of 18th c. disciplinary power, then the medicalization of the person-become-patient was an effect/strategy (?) of 20th c. infopolitical documentation.]
One possible hunch (but just a hunch at this point): [If the medicalization of the hospital was an effect/strategy (?) of 18th c. disciplinary power, then the medicalization of the person-become-patient was an effect/strategy (?) of 20th c. infopolitical documentation.]