Diagnostic determination of diseases of unknown pathogenesis is of necessity vague; great confusion has arisen with regard to the pseudopelade of Brocq and other forms of atrophic permanent alopecias. It has been the fashion of the last century to describe numerous, clinically slightly aberrant, forms as separate entities, while now the general tendency prevails to lump together different clinical disorders on the basis of one common characteristic. This trend is also apparent in the classification of the disorders under discussion. Brocq, in 1888, described a cicatricial patchy atrophy of the scalp as sycosis lupoide, and Unna, Hoffman, Galewsky, and others described the same, or very similar, conditions under different names.* Brocq stressed the absence of clinical inflammation in his cases, which differentiates this disorder from the alopecias due to purulent folliculitis, but Miescher and collaborators and others noted a certain amount of papillary reddening in many instances.