Even Famous People Have to Wee
Kings, politicians, artists, inventors and the surprisingly illustrious history of urinary problems
Politicians, artists, inventors and the surprisingly illustrious history of urinary problems
Fame can buy you quite a lot.
Palaces. Private jets. Personal chefs. The best seat in the house.
What it cannot apparently buy you is immunity from having a troublesome urinary tract.
Some of the most recognisable people in history have experienced bladder stones, urinary retention, incontinence, prostate disease, bladder cancer and life-changing urinary surgery.
One celebrated surviving a bladder operation by holding an annual dinner.
Another responded to urinary problems in his family by having a flexible catheter made by a silversmith.
A former Vice President of the United States lived for years with bladder cancer.
One of Britain's most famous contemporary artists lives without a bladder.
And a television presenter has spoken openly about the continence problems that can accompany spinal cord injury.
Everybody wees. And sometimes, everybody's plumbing goes wrong.
So, in the interests of making urinary health a little less embarrassing, let's meet some rather famous bladders.
Samuel Pepys: the man who threw a party for his bladder stone
We have to begin with Samuel Pepys.
Long before he began recording Restoration London, the Great Plague and the Great Fire in his famous diary, Pepys had another rather pressing concern: his bladder.
Pepys suffered from bladder stones from a young age. By his twenties, his symptoms were sufficiently severe that he decided to undergo an operation to remove the stone.
This was 1658.
There was no modern general anaesthetic. No antibiotics. No antiseptic operating theatre. No CT scan to tell the surgeon precisely what he was looking for.
Instead, Pepys underwent lithotomy — an ancient surgical procedure in which the bladder was accessed surgically so that the stone could be extracted.
And somehow, he survived.
Medical historians examining Pepys's case record that his operation took place on 26 March 1658. His subsequent diary and biographical material provide an unusually personal window into what it was like to live with and be treated for bladder stones in seventeenth-century England.
Pepys was understandably rather pleased about still being alive.
So pleased, in fact, that he subsequently marked the anniversary of the operation with what became known as his “stone feast” — a dinner with friends held in gratitude for his survival. Historical editions of his diary also record that he had a special case made in which to keep the stone itself.
There is something wonderfully Pepysian about surviving seventeenth-century bladder surgery and responding by turning the anniversary into a social occasion.
What can Pepys's bladder teach us?
Thankfully, treatment has moved on rather dramatically since 1658.
Bladder stones are hard masses of minerals that can form when the bladder does not empty completely. They can cause lower abdominal pain, burning when urinating, increased frequency, difficulty passing urine, recurrent UTIs and blood in the urine.
Larger stones usually require removal, but modern procedures can often break them into smaller pieces using instruments passed through the urethra rather than subjecting somebody to Pepys's experience.
Pepys's story is entertaining from a distance.
It also reminds us just how long human beings have been dealing with urinary disease.
Benjamin Franklin: naturally, he got involved with the catheter
Benjamin Franklin was a printer, writer, diplomat, scientist and inventor.
So perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that urinary difficulties resulted in some eighteenth-century engineering.
In December 1752, Franklin's older brother John wanted a flexible urinary catheter.
Benjamin immediately began thinking about how one might be made.
And this is where we have something particularly lovely for a historian:
the letter survives.
On 8 December 1752, Franklin wrote to his brother explaining that he had gone straight to a silversmith and instructed him to make a flexible catheter. He even sat with the craftsman while it was being made so it could be sent promptly.
The device was made using coiled silver so that it could negotiate the urinary passage more easily than a rigid tube.
There is an important historical qualification here.
Franklin is sometimes credited with inventing the flexible catheter. That isn't quite right. The scholarly annotation to Franklin's own letter notes that similar flexible devices were already known in Europe. Franklin appears instead to have devised or adapted a practical version in response to his brother's needs.
Which is arguably more interesting anyway.
This wasn't abstract invention.
It was somebody he loved having difficulty passing urine, followed by:
Can we make something that helps?
What can Franklin's catheter teach us?
Catheters remain an essential part of modern urology.
They allow urine to drain when somebody cannot empty their bladder normally and are used in numerous circumstances — temporarily around surgery or acute illness, and as part of longer-term bladder management for some people.
The materials have changed rather considerably since Franklin's coiled silver contraption.
The basic problem has not.
Sometimes a bladder cannot empty properly.
And sometimes the solution is to give the urine another way out.
Hubert Humphrey: when blood in the urine matters
The story of Hubert Humphrey takes us somewhere much more serious.
Humphrey served as Vice President of the United States under Lyndon B. Johnson and later returned to the Senate.
In 1967, he developed blood in his urine.
Investigations at the time did not produce a straightforward diagnosis. His subsequent medical history became an extraordinary case in the history of bladder cancer — sufficiently important that researchers later returned to preserved specimens using molecular techniques unavailable when Humphrey was originally investigated. A New England Journal of Medicine paper published in 1994 examined the early detection of his bladder carcinoma, and his case was revisited in Urology in 2024.
His disease eventually became invasive.
In October 1976, Humphrey underwent a radical cystectomy — removal of the bladder.
Pathology showed invasive disease with spread to pelvic lymph nodes. He died in January 1978.
Nearly half a century later, his case is still being discussed in the urological literature.
What can Humphrey's bladder teach us?
One lesson is remarkably simple:
Blood in your urine deserves attention.
Haematuria has many possible causes, and seeing blood does not mean somebody necessarily has cancer.
But it is a symptom that can require investigation.
Humphrey's story also demonstrates something else about medicine: diagnostic technology changes.
Doctors in 1967 did not have access to the molecular tests, imaging and investigative techniques available to clinicians today. When researchers later examined material from Humphrey's earlier investigations, they were able to ask questions that simply could not have been answered in the same way during his lifetime.
Sometimes famous patients become part of medical history in ways they could never have anticipated.
Tracey Emin: life without a bladder
Jump forward to 2020 and we find an extraordinarily different public account of bladder cancer.
Tracey Emin has spent much of her career making intensely personal experiences visible through her art.
Her experience of bladder cancer has been no exception.
Emin was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bladder cancer and underwent extensive surgery. She subsequently spoke publicly about having no bladder and living with a urostomy bag.
A urostomy creates another route for urine to leave the body. In a commonly used form called an ileal conduit, a short piece of bowel is used to carry urine from the ureters to a stoma on the abdomen, where it drains into a pouch.
It is a profound change to how the body works.
And Emin has been remarkably frank about it.
Her post-cancer work and interviews have confronted the physical consequences of surgery rather than hiding them. In 2026 she was still discussing the effects of her cancer treatment and life with a urostomy publicly.
What can Emin's urostomy teach us?
Perhaps that survival and adaptation aren't always neat.
Cancer treatment can save somebody's life while permanently altering their body.
A stoma can be both an enormous adjustment and the means by which someone continues living.
And there is something particularly powerful about a person whose career has so often concerned the body refusing to make this part of the body unspeakable.
A bag of urine may not traditionally belong in the glamorous world of contemporary art.
Then again, why shouldn't it?
Urology is part of human life too.
Stephen Fry: talking publicly about the prostate
Then there is Stephen Fry.
In 2018, Fry revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The diagnosis followed a routine health check that found a raised PSA level. After further investigation, he underwent surgery in January 2018.
What happened next is particularly relevant to Oui.
He talked about it.
Publicly.
To millions of people.
Prostate Cancer UK subsequently highlighted Fry's disclosure and his encouragement to other men to understand their own prostate-cancer risk. He has continued supporting prostate-cancer awareness and research; in 2024, NHS England reported that Fry was encouraging patients to participate in a major prostate-cancer research initiative.
What can Fry's prostate teach us?
Talking matters.
The prostate sits just below the bladder and surrounds the urethra. Conditions affecting it can therefore be intimately connected with urinary symptoms and urinary function.
And yet prostate health has historically been surrounded by embarrassment.
There is an enormous difference between a famous person simply having a disease and choosing to say:
This happened to me. Let's talk about it.
Public disclosure cannot replace healthcare campaigns or clinical services.
But it can make the next person's conversation a little easier.
And that matters.
Sophie Morgan: Continence is neurological too
Finally, we come to a urinary problem that isn't primarily a disease of the urinary tract at all.
Sophie Morgan was paralysed following a car crash when she was 18.
People can see that she uses a wheelchair.
What they cannot necessarily see are the other consequences of spinal cord injury.
Morgan has chosen to talk about them.
In a 2024 interview with the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Quest podcast, she explained that her spinal cord injury affects much more than her ability to walk, explicitly discussing incontinence and sexual function alongside other consequences of paralysis.
In another public interview, she described spinal injury as leaving her incontinent and spoke about secondary complications including UTIs and chronic pain.
That openness matters because it challenges one of our most persistent misconceptions about continence: Bladder control isn't simply about the bladder.
What can Morgan's bladder teach us?
Having a wee is a neurological act.
The brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves are involved in storing urine and coordinating when the bladder empties.
NICE explains that damage involving the brain, spinal cord or peripheral nervous system can therefore produce characteristic patterns of bladder and sphincter dysfunction. Spinal cord injury is one of the recognised causes.
That can mean urgency.
Incontinence.
Retention.
Altered sensation.
Difficulty emptying.
Recurrent urinary complications.
And because the neurological centres involved in bladder, bowel and sexual function are closely related, these difficulties can occur together.
This is one reason representation of disability matters.
We often recognise the visible consequence of neurological injury — the wheelchair — while knowing remarkably little about the invisible consequences.
Morgan choosing to talk about continence makes one of those consequences a little less invisible.
Six famous people. Six very different urinary stories.
Pepys gives us bladder stones.
Franklin gives us catheterisation and urinary retention.
Humphrey gives us haematuria and bladder cancer.
Emin gives us cystectomy and life with a urostomy.
Fry gives us prostate cancer.
Morgan gives us neurological bladder dysfunction and continence.
They lived in different centuries.
They had radically different lives.
Their experiences aren't medically equivalent.
But together they make a rather important point.
Urological health is ordinary human health.
Bladders don't care whether somebody is famous.
Kidneys aren't impressed by job titles.
The prostate is famously indifferent to social status.
And the nervous system doesn't check somebody's CV before deciding whether it is going to cooperate with their bladder.
Perhaps that sounds flippant.
But embarrassment thrives on the idea that urinary problems are somehow abnormal, dirty or uniquely humiliating.
They aren't.
They are medical problems involving organs and biological systems that every human body depends upon.
Sometimes they are temporary.
Sometimes they are treatable.
Sometimes they are life-changing.
And sometimes they become footnotes in the biographies of extraordinarily famous people.
The history of urology is really the history of people
There is another reason I like these stories.
Medicine can look remarkably tidy when we encounter it retrospectively.
A disease has a name.
A procedure has a name.
A textbook tells us how it is treated.
But patients don't experience medicine as a textbook.
Pepys didn't know whether he would survive his operation.
Franklin was trying to solve an immediate practical problem for his brother.
Humphrey lived through years of uncertainty before the full nature of his disease became apparent.
Emin had to wake up in a body permanently altered by cancer surgery.
Fry had to decide whether to tell millions of strangers about his prostate.
Morgan lives with consequences of spinal cord injury that the people who see her on television might never otherwise consider.
Behind every famous medical history is something much more ordinary:
a person trying to work out how to live in the body they have.
And perhaps famous people can help us here.
Not because their illnesses matter more.
They don't.
But because when somebody recognisable says “this happened to me”, something that has been hidden suddenly becomes discussable.
A bladder enters the conversation.
A stoma becomes visible.
Incontinence gets named.
Someone mentions blood in their urine.
Someone talks about their prostate.
And somebody reading it might feel slightly less embarrassed about talking about their own.
Which is rather the point.
Everybody wees.
Let's stop pretending that what happens when it goes wrong is too embarrassing to talk about.
Oui. Together, we can.
A note from Oui
Oui provides health information and awareness, not individual clinical or medical advice. The stories above illustrate the enormous variety of conditions that can affect urinary health; they should not be used to interpret or diagnose your own symptoms.
In particular, blood in urine should be medically assessed even when there is only a small amount or it happens once. Anyone worried about new or changing urinary symptoms should seek appropriate healthcare advice.
For living people included in this article, Oui has only discussed health information they have themselves made public.
References & further reading
Adshead JM, Borley NR, Chipping P, et al. Samuel Pepys: A Patient Perspective of Lithotomy in 17th Century England. The Journal of Urology. 2006;175(4):1221–1224. doi:10.1016/S0022-5347(05)00677-4.
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Historical editions record the 26 March 1658 operation, his subsequent annual “stone-feast” and the case commissioned to hold his stone.
NHS. Bladder stones. Current NHS information on symptoms, causes, investigation and modern treatment of bladder calculi.
Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin to John Franklin, 8 December 1752. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, via Founders Online, National Archives. This is our primary source for Franklin's flexible catheter.
Feneley RCL, Hopley IB, Wells PNT. Urinary catheters: history, current status, adverse events and research agenda. Journal of Medical Engineering & Technology. 2015. Includes Franklin's catheter within the wider history of urinary catheterisation.
Hruban RH, van der Riet P, Erozan YS, Sidransky D. Molecular biology and the early detection of carcinoma of the bladder—the case of Hubert H. Humphrey. New England Journal of Medicine. 1994;330(18):1276–1278. doi:10.1056/NEJM199405053301805.
Morris KE, Pappas TN. Malignancy in the Public Life: The Story of Hubert Humphrey's Bladder Cancer. Urology. 2024;185:54–58. doi:10.1016/j.urology.2023.12.026.
Loughlin KR. Hubert Humphrey's Bladder Cancer: If He Could Have Time Traveled, Would that Have Changed the Outcome? Urologic Clinics of North America. 2026;53(3):xiii–xiv. doi:10.1016/j.ucl.2026.05.002.
Tracey Emin, interviewed by Jonathan Jones. Tracey Emin on her cancer self-portraits: “This is mine. I own it”. The Guardian, 13 May 2021. Emin discusses bladder cancer, extensive surgery and living with a urostomy.
TIME. Tracey Emin Lost a Few Organs and Got a New Lease on Life. 2026. A recent interview reflecting on Emin's bladder cancer, surgery and subsequent life and work.
Prostate Cancer UK. Stephen Fry calls for all men to know their risk after his treatment for prostate cancer. 2 March 2018.
Prostate Cancer UK — Stephen Fry's story
NHS England. Stephen Fry urges patients to help save lives with new prostate cancer research. 23 July 2024.
NHS England — Stephen Fry and prostate-cancer research
Muscular Dystrophy Association, Quest Podcast. Episode 40 — Unlocking Access and Inspiring Action with Sophie Morgan. 2024. Morgan discusses her spinal cord injury and explicitly describes incontinence and sexual dysfunction among its consequences.
Listen/read the Sophie Morgan interview
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Urinary incontinence in neurological disease: assessment and management. CG148. NICE explains the role of the central and peripheral nervous systems in controlling the lower urinary tract and recognises spinal cord injury, head injury, stroke, peripheral neuropathy and other neurological conditions as causes of bladder dysfunction.
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