Listening to patients 

“After dinner my pain increasing I was forced to go to bed, and by and by my pain rose to be as great for an hour or two as ever I remember it was in any fit of the stone…” 

Samuel Pepys, fearful that his lithotomy operation 4 years earlier may have been for nothing, 14 May 1664 
 

In a medical museum, surgical tools and clinical manuals show how historic operations were performed. But what did it feel like to be the patient?  
 

The composer, Marin Marais offers a rare glimpse into this experience, using music to evoke his own terrifying bladder stone surgery. Similarly, the diary of Samuel Pepys captures the uncertainty of chronic illness and the joy of survival. For years afterward, Pepys celebrated the anniversary of the operation, even preserving his removed ‘tennis ball’-sized bladder stone in a casket. 
 

Pepys’ writings also show how patients were active participants in their care. Like many people of his time, he combined folk medicine and apothecaries’ remedies.  However, his wealth and connections gave him privileged access to London’s elite physicians and surgeons.  
 

These personal stories reveal how people made sense of illness and challenge the idea of the passive patient.