So Madness and Civilization has been around for, oh, forty years in its full, original French form. Now, have there been no French or French-speaking scholars in these quatre décennies that could have possibly appraised the rest of the world that “Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique” in fact contained errors? No? I’ve not read the text, but over years I have seen it referenced and discussed in countless works of history and literary criticism – and, outside of clearly ideologically-driven critiques, not one provided even a glimmer of suspicion about its findings. How’s that?