Lupus Erythematosus and Tuberculosis

THE view that lupus erythematosus is an affection of tubercular origin has received strong support from many competent observers, from Besnier, for example, in France, and from Boeck of Christiania, but so far the idea is simply hypothetical.The lesions are, in a large number of cases, so symmetrical (and tend to become so in all as they progress), and its origin is so evidently erythematous, that the failure to discover bacilli in the lesions themselves is not surprising ; indeed, we may say, that it would be more surprising to find them in an affection which has from its outset such a tendency to exact symmetry .