The term malignant in respect to pemphigus vulgaris is herein used to describe those types with which there is apparently going to be a fatal termination, as against the benign types from which recovery occurs. I am not in sympathy with the thought that when a patient with clinically clear pemphigus vulgaris recovers that patient did not really have pemphigus vulgaris. There are undoubted cases of clinically well marked pemphigus vulgaris in which a fatal prognosis has been given but, surprisingly, complete recovery occurs and there are no subsequent remissions.
So far as I have been able to ascertain, the only recorded instance in the American literature of familial malignant pemphigus vulgaris is that by Feldman,1 who three years ago reported the disease in 2 brothers, both of whom died, 1 with pemphigus vulgaris of many months' duration and the other with pemphigus vulgaris of much shorter duration. In