Can you imagine that everyone is not allowed to go out of their house and there are guards check on their health statement everyday? At the end of the 17th century, this really happened. Michel Foucault talks about plague city in an excerpt from Discipline and Punish. Surprisingly, the way plague city works still exist nowadays. However, plague city can work in a positive way with developed technology and right disciplinary policy. 

At the end of the 17th century, an order was placed in a town that appeared the plague. The order commands, "Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic, who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street, he will be condemned to death."(Foucault 240) Each town is divided into several districts and an intendant is in charge of each districts. Syndics are in charge of streets and they go to the houses in the street that's under their authority to lock the houses and then give the key to the intendants. The syndics also check on each person in each family's health statement. They have all the information about everybody in their street and they call and check on everyone to make sure nobody is ill or dead. Plague city prevents the chance of sick people spread their sickness to others, but also cuts off people's connections. Foucault writes, "If it is absolutely necessary to leave the house, it will be done in turn, avoiding any meeting." (Foucault 240) Foucault uses the plague city to compare with panopticism. The way plague city works takes up more energy and human resources like guards, intendants, and syndics whereas the panopticism only needs people to watch in the center. The ICU structure in hospitals is an example of panopticism. It saves a lot of energy for the doctors and nurses because they can watch over every patient in the center so that they don't have to go around and check frequently. The plague city is related to power, knowledge, and discipline in the excerpt also. The way plague city punishes people is to kill them whereas the modern method Foucault introduced is to put people in prison. Plague city collects people's information in a physical way. Foucault uses the modern way of collecting people's information, which is the technology. Although plague city seems to be so far away, it still exists nowadays. 

In 2003, China, or even the whole world, was impacted by SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). I was an elementary student at the age of 8. We were asked to measure our temperature everyday and report it to the teacher. If we have an unusual temperature, we will be taken to the hospital and stay in a separate room until the doctor makes sure we don't have any various and our temperature is back to normal. On the temperature checking time period, we had to stay in a certain classroom and we could only leave after the teacher said so. It's similar to the plague city like Foucault writes in the Panopticism, "On the appointed day, everyone is ordered to stay indoors." (Foucault 240) Each teacher collects temperatures and health status of students in his or her class and then turns the reports to the head teacher of the grade. The head teacher reports to the head master and then the head master reports to the government just like how syndics report their results to the higher authority, the intendants. Not only in school, people with unusual temperatures are not allowed to go into airports, train stations and a lot of public places. The government recommended not going to public places unless necessary. Although the temperature measuring before entrance has a low efficiency, it made sure nobody is carrying various around. I think the government used the form of plague city well and kept people away from the various.  

 Although plague city takes a lot of human resources and energy, it can avoid chances of people doing it without noticing. The plague city form back then couldn't benefit people as much as they do now and it even brought negative effects to people in the plague town in the 17th century because they didn't have developed technology. If the discipline policy were to send people to the hospital instead of killing, the plague city structure would bring better results.
