Herpes zoster oticus with facial paralysis is a comparatively rare condition. Ramsay Hunt,1 who investigated this condition in 1907, succeeded in collecting only sixty cases from the literature at that time. Since then a dozen more cases have been reported by various observers.2
Herpes zoster appears to be essentially a hemorrhagic inflammation of one or more posterior root ganglions. It is of unknown etiology and is manifest clinically by pain and a vesicular skin eruption in the area supplied by the affected ganglions and afferent nerve. Although it more commonly affects ganglions of the spinal cord, it is a well known clinical fact that the sensory ganglions of certain cranial nerves that are embryologically analogous to the spinal ganglions may similarly be affected, such, for example, as the geniculate and gasserian ganglions.
Although the facial nerve is essentially motor, there is associated with it during its course through