How the Royal Family Deals with Serious Health Issues
As in the past, cautious language was used in the announcement that the Princess of Wales had an abdominal operation, and the King faces prostate surgery next week
The world heard the unsettling news on Wednesday that the forty-two-year-old Princess of Wales has undergone abdominal surgery in a London hospital, where she will remain for the next ten days to two weeks. Less than two hours later came another bulletin: that seventy-five-year-old King Charles III will undergo a procedure next week to treat an enlarged prostate. Both announcements were couched in careful language and called to mind a century of circumspect descriptions of health issues in the royal family.
In the case of Catherine, the Palace made a plea for her privacy, emphasized that the surgery was “planned,” her condition was not “cancerous,” and the operation was successful. The Palace said she would be unable to return to her public duties until after Easter. The King’s statement said that his diagnosis was recent. His prostate needed a “corrective procedure,” and he would have a “short period” of recovery.
Dealing with a more common problem, the King could afford to be more transparent. The Palace statement pointed out that “thousands of men” undergo his procedure each year, and his advisers said he was “very keen” for his diagnosis to be clear so he could help others to seek help in similar circumstances. Catherine’s statement was more guarded, although aides signaled that she may be forthcoming with details when she is in better condition. There is no denying that two weeks in the hospital is a long time for a young woman—or that three months is a long recuperation.
I was struck while reading the two announcements that we could gain some perspective by revisiting previous serious medical situations in the royal family and how they were communicated to the public.
Charles’s great-grandfather, King George V, had several medical emergencies that were more severe than the Palace admitted. On October 28, 1915, during the First World War, he was reviewing troops in France when he was thrown by his startled horse, which then fell on him, breaking his pelvis in two places. He was in excruciating pain, especially during the passage across the English Channel. “The injuries were more serious than could then be disclosed,” wrote one of his doctors, Lord Dawson of Penn. A week later, Dawson and his colleagues reported that the King’s “general condition” had improved. They further said that he had suffered “severe shock, much bruising, and pain, but there has been no more serious outcome of his dangerous mishap. There has been no evidence whatever of any visceral lesion or of any fracture.”
“Never again quite the same man”
By mid-December, the doctors were “happy to report” that the King had sufficiently recovered to “resume work with certain limitations” and he should “avoid any cause of fatigue.” In fact, they hid the existence of fractures, and the fact that they didn’t heal properly, causing stiffness, restricted movement, and pain for the rest of the King’s life. “He was never again quite the same man physically as he had been,” Dawson later admitted.
The reliance on euphemism continued when Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth II on April 21, 1926. The news was “authoritatively announced,” reported The Times. Obstetrician Sir George Blacker indicated that after a long labor, “a certain line of treatment was successfully adopted.” The baby had been in breech position, which required an unmentioned caesarean section.
In the winter of 1928, King George V nearly died from a severe lung infection. On November 21st, his doctors issued a brief bulletin saying he had “a cold with some fever.” Three days later, blood cultures revealed a streptococcus infection indicating septicemia, but the doctors withheld the diagnosis from the public until December 10th. Queen Mary’s handwriting began appearing in the King’s daily diary, noting “congestion of the right lung…. plastic pleurisy in the right side.”
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