Negotiating consent: patient agency and gynaecological surgery (France and the Netherlands, 1890s-1960s)

Scholars have often depicted the rise of informed consent as a recent development in which patients have achieved (legal) autonomy since the 1960s. This project challenges the view that patients had (almost) no autonomy before the post-war period. It aims to provide a long-term historical perspective on patient agency in negotiations over consent in France and the Netherlands from the 1890s until the 1960s. Gynaecological surgery will serve as the main focus. This was a type of invasive abdominal surgery that blossomed around 1890 and for which the omission of consent lead to court cases. 

This project focuses on practices and conflicts related to surgical consent and disclosure about the risks of operations. Rarely used sources will be consulted such as hospital archives and court records. In addition, medical publications will be analysed by means of digital text-mining and traditional hermeneutical methods. Using this innovative methodology, this project will extend existing histories of informed consent in which the patient voice and the interaction between doctors and patients have been overlooked. It will generate fresh insight into broader shifts in patient agency and into the behaviour of patients in relation to physicians, relatives and other actors.