Visible women 

In the early 1800s, many wealthy women were active healthcare consumers. They chose their practitioners and directed their own treatments. However, their experiences also show how limited medical treatments were and how much influence clinicians often had over women patients.   

This can be seen in the letters of Princess Amelia and novelist, Frances ‘“Fanny” ’ Burney.  

From age 15, Amelia showed early symptoms of tuberculosis.  As her health declined, she selected physicians, Henry Halford and Matthew Baillie. During their care, she received painful, ineffective treatments like bloodletting, setons and purgatives.  

Amelia also suffered mental anguish from Halford’s choices as he prioritised the King’s health over hers. He breached her confidentiality regarding her secret marriage, and both doctors ultimately hid Amelia’s terminal prognosis from her, while reporting the truth to her father.  
 

In 1811, Fanny Burney underwent a mastectomy without anaesthesia, a trauma that she described in a letter to her sister. She recollected the sudden, terrifying arrival of her medical team as an ambush by ‘seven men in black’ and her ‘unending scream’ during the operation. Throughout the ordeal, she refused to be tied down and even held her own breast for the surgeon’s knife.  
 

These rare accounts capture a turning point when patients were increasingly expected to surrender control over their bodies.