A HISTORY OF LUPUS THROUGH THE AGES

[lupusinflight]

Hello friends,

I am curious if any of you have stumbled upon this video made by Professor Arnaud of the Autoimmune Disease Centre in Strasbourg? I am quite fascinated by it. From a historical point of view, he draws a through line from AD 850 to our modern day using photographs from various medical texts. One thing that really leaps out at me is the almost total absence of women in the story until the most recent medical notes. Either this could be because only men were written about as patients, or...? Considering the most commonly known fact about lupus today is that women are affected nine times out of ten, it does seem an intriguing lapse on Prof Arnaud's part to not mention how the gender switch occurred, or when or why.

I have been working on a book about living with lupus and auto-immunity for many years and this historical element is important to include, but as always there continue to be these giant gaps and confusing, inconclusive histories. Any thoughts?

youtu.be/SIyWAdRiX4w(Not working as expected?)

P.S. have had both my AstraZeneca vaccine jabs - my second post jab headache is only now slowly wearing off after many days! Bonne chance to you all xxxx

P.P.S healthunlocked.com/lupusuk/... EOLHPC wrote about a similar theme a couple of years ago, which I'm linking here too... which dates our first lupus patient Eraclius to a hundred years later and instead of the religious cure Eraclius apparently experienced thanks to Saint Martin, there are some dodgy chickens involved!! Whom to believe?!!

[EOLHPC]

😯 FASCINATING & even FUN🤣🤣🤣🤣...can’t believe I could enjoy watching a history lesson about such awful illness...maybe the charm in his lovely voice + the wonderful graphics helped...but 🤦🏼‍♀️ there’s gotta have been so much HORRENDOUS suffering through the centuries...& 🤷🏼‍♀️here we are now, only that bit better at managing the 🦋- 🐺

💞💞💞💞 glad the post-vacc No2 headache is settling down...

🤩 Many thanks Shaista: GRRRRRRREAT FIND❣️& YES: 😧 where have all the women gone⁉️🐯GRRRRRR...Well, plenty of their faces in his historic illustrations of poor rashed & ulcerated faces 🤦🏼‍♀️

You’ve made my day...especially as my feet & lower legs were as interested as I was in this video (they’d had a bit of a hiccough with sildenafil this afternoon: 26 days into my rheumy’s trial of sildenafil for the reperfusion injury due to severe ischemia, our CTD nurse now has me up from 25 to 75mg daily ...but, after a run of very positive effects, today the warm weather triggered a 🔥flare during my afternoon nap, which punctured my 🎈a bit....all was not lost, though, cause sildenafil seems to have helped them be more cooperative than they used to be: I got a few tried & true self help tricks out of my 🌈Magic 🧳 Bag, and 💫HEY PRESTO 😯 the 🔥 damped down within an hour or so)

👏👏👏👏👏👏🍀❤️🍀❤️ Coco

[lupusinflight in reply to EOLHPC]

EOLHPC It was definitely a fun and fascinating find!! I like the image of Professor Arnaud trawling through ancient medieval textbooks to find any and every mention of la loup or lupula or lupus vorax.... who is this professor anyway?!! All that medical confusion he describes continues down through the ages and echoes in every one of our diagnoses ...

I was thinking of your feet and legs through the video too - and my own years with vasculitis and peripheral lesions... and this very clear medieval distinction that was being made for lupus patients - ulceration of the lower limbs ... I’m sorry the sildenafil came a bit of a cropper today ... will look forward to the report on Wednesday. En avant 🥰🥰🥰🥰

[EOLHPC in reply to lupusinflight]

🤗He is a total STUNNER...🥰 oh my that voice, its infections...:you shoulda seen 🦡 perk up in his office when he heard me playing the video in the kitchen! 😆...How many hours did this adorable chap say he spent trawling The Lit: something like 2,000? I’ll listen again.

Just wish he’d included more about about the ancient world, cause, over the years, time & again, I’ve found respectable sources mentioned describing & discussing what historians equate to lupus.

Am fascinated by the historic tendency to consider AIDs tubercular, eg this was true of Crohns Disease as late as the 1990s! Thanks again for this GRRRRREAT find: made my weekend 💞💞💞💞

lupus.org.uk/history-of-lupus

An excerpt:

“Hippocrates was born in 460 BC and his name is the origin of the 'Hippocratic Oath', which all modern doctors still adhere to. Hippocrates wrote about the severe red facial rash which we now recognise as a classic symptom of Lupus.”

PS yes indeed: was TOTALLY relating to/identifying with those sections re the legs...& also the face...AND am still processing my 1954 diagnosis re where the science stood at that point + how my parents reacted to it: I’ve been aware the diagnostic tests were a lot less sophisticated until the 1970s, but I didn’t realise quite when diagnostics actually began to be more sophisticated. So, no wonder my toddler-diagnosis was clinical, based on physical manifestations 🤷🏼‍♀️...and no wonder my mother & father didn’t fully understand the significance

[Joaclp in reply to EOLHPC]

😥😥😥💕💕💕💕

[Joaclp]

Thank you both for these histories. Excuse this if I seem to have a parti pris, but I am wondering about this Strasbourg author being male. I am going to put some of my art historian friends on the case, one an expert in Medieval manuscripts and the other on Early Renaissance French writers. Both women have written on distinguished women, some cloistered, in their respective areas of expertise.

[lupusinflight in reply to Joaclp]

Sounds an excellent plan Joaclp - will be eagerly waiting for Horrible Histories Part Three 😊 filling in the usual misogynistic gaps...

[Joaclp in reply to lupusinflight]

I argree, lupusinflight, they may be horrible. I just saw a paper that discusses newfound medieval depictions of leprosy, not sure yet if it's sexist. Will keep you informed! Also, as to whether it is conflated with lupus, the way syphilis seems to be in the confusing historical record.🙃

Your personal account is certainly a much-awaited contribution, one hopefully not horrible but probably poignant.😥

Glad that we are surviving, more or less, our second jabs. Mine triggered a dartboard rash around the site and a swelling the size and shape of a baseball that is now, a week later, a low tumulus. So sorry, Coco, that your miracle medication is failing you today. 😥😭Let's hope for a return to wizardry tomorrow!! Xx

[lupusinflight in reply to Joaclp]

Yikes, that covid vaccine reaction sounds intense! How’s the low tumulus today??

Thank you for awaiting my book - it’s been many years in the writing and I will be eager/ curious to receive feedback from readers x

[EOLHPC in reply to Joaclp]

😯❣️👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Have you read the latest biography of Queen Anne?

Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

By Anne Somerset

goodreads.com/book/show/160...

Somerset went to great lengths investigating poor Queen Anne’s multisystem manifestations... and her distinguished sources found these were probably down to lupus. There is lots about Q.A’s health in this book. But apparently none of her doctors actually mentioned lupus...I wrote a review for our LUK Cambridge newsletter, and our close friend the much-loved, long-time chair Shelagh Cheesman RIP contacted Somerset who very kindly wrote us a WONDERFUL piece re her research in this, 🤓 FASCINATING! I can send it to you - if you’re interested, let me know: l dig it out💞💞💞💞

[Joaclp in reply to EOLHPC]

Yes, I would like to read the book, which I'll obtain, and the other pieces: yours and that by Somerset. I only know Queen Anne from the recent movie and an architectural style! Thanks so much, but please pace yourself and don't hurry. I can wait.👍👍👍🤓📚📖✏👩‍💻😍❤💕

J 💔

[EOLHPC in reply to Joaclp]

🤗👍💞💞💞💞