In contrast to other introductory works to Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic, which treat it as a theoretical artifact, this article attempts to evaluate this book from the perspectives of the history of medicine and archaeology of knowledge. The main argument of it is that Foucault's methodology is different from that of the social history of medicine. Foucault regards that the epistemological break and discursive transformation is more important than that of historical-causal analysis in the evolution of medical history. At last, this article provides some criticisms regarding the Chinese translation of the book.