A brief history of lupus, told through the body, a wolf and a butterfly.
Explore the archiveLUPUS / LATIN
The disease was given the name of an animal long before its immune mechanisms were understood.
Lupus is Latin for “wolf”. In medieval medical writing, the word was associated with destructive skin lesions — imagined as something consuming or devouring the flesh.
A familiar story says the name came from marks that resembled wolf bites. Historical research questions that explanation. The earliest descriptions were not necessarily of the autoimmune disease we recognise today.
ARCHIVE NOTE / A medieval name is not evidence of a medieval understanding of modern systemic lupus.
ERYTHEMATOSUS / FROM GREEK ERYTHĒMA
A word and colour taken from the skin.
Erythematosus derives from Greek erythēma, meaning redness or a flush of the skin, related to erythros — “red”. The term pointed to the visible inflammation physicians observed.
Put together, lupus erythematosus joins the wolf of early medicine with the redness of clinical description.
LANGUAGE / A VISUAL DIAGNOSIS BEFORE A SYSTEMIC ONETHE IMAGE THAT REMAINED
Eventually, the wolf gave way to a butterfly.
By the nineteenth century, physicians were documenting a facial rash that could spread across the cheeks and bridge of the nose. Its butterfly-like shape became one of lupus's most familiar visual symbols. Not everyone with lupus develops this rash, and it does not diagnose lupus by itself.
ARCHIVAL CHRONOLOGY / SELECTED MILESTONES
Medieval texts used the word for destructive skin conditions. A 2025 historical analysis identifies a 1230 medical treatise by Rolando da Parma as the first known use in a medical text, while earlier nonmedical mentions remain debated.
Laurent Biett’s observations, reported by his student Pierre Cazenave, helped distinguish what would later be called lupus erythematosus from other skin diseases.
Ferdinand von Hebra described butterfly-like facial lesions; in 1851 Cazenave published the name lupus erythematosus in a classic description of its cutaneous form.
Moriz Kaposi recognised that lupus could involve serious symptoms beyond the skin, helping establish the distinction between cutaneous and systemic illness.
Advances in immunology transformed the understanding of lupus. Today, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is known as a complex autoimmune condition that can affect multiple organs — although its precise causes remain incompletely understood.
This archive traces the words and images we have used to understand lupus. The rest of the exhibition asks what it feels like to live with it.
Explore symptomsRESEARCH / SOURCES
Text is a concise creative interpretation of published medical history. The artwork is conceptual AI-generated imagery, not archival photography or clinical evidence.