But on the one hand, with medicine, we find the work of a form of knowledge that treats the different forms of madness as so many natural species; on the other, an attempt at recognition that lets madness 'speak' for itself, allowing voices to be heard, which for the first time in the history of the Christian West are neither those of prophecy, nor trance or possession, nor buffoonery; voices where madness speaks for nothing or no one else, but for itself.