IN A SURVEY of 171 patients with pemphigus admitted to Bellevue Hospital from 1911 to 1941, Gellis and Glass1 found no clear-cut evidence of familial involvement. Feldman2 was the first to report in the American literature a case of familial pemphigus vulgaris, the disease occurring in 2 brothers who died ten years apart. In 1940, Greenbaum3 reported that in a period of eighteen years he had observed the disease in a father and son, in sisters and, finally, in a husband and wife.
In view of the rareness of such observations, we feel that the following case of a woman whose 2 brothers had died of the disease should be reported.
REPORT OF CASE
R. M., a Russian Jewess aged 65, who had never been ill previously, in July 1946 had onset of a slight fever and sore mouth, with vesicles on the buccal mucosa and tongue.