Before describing the moment when the reason of the classical age will reduce madness to silence by what he calls a “strange act of force,” Foucault shows how the exclusion and internment of madness found a sort of structural niche prepared for it by the history of another exclu- sion: the exclusion of leprosy. Unfortunately, we cannot be detained by the brilliant passages of the chapter entitled Stultifera navis. They would also pose numerous questions.