The etiology of alopecia areata remains a mystery despite considerable study. The extensive and carefully performed researches of the late Lucien Jacquet having apparently given the coup de grace to the parasitic theory, one must look elsewhere for an explanation of this disorder. Several years ago, Sabouraud stressed the importance of Max Joseph's experiments, which have been repeated by Mibelli, Samuel, Behrend, Moskolenko and Gregoriantz, K枚ster and Aubrun. Sabouraud1 may be quoted in part as follows:
According to these already ancient researches, it appears that certain injuries of the cervical sympathetic chain in animals may produce in them a syndrome analogous to our pelade. It would seem that whoever wishes to elucidate the pathogenesis of pelade ought to take up those experiments in series, and endeavor to ascertain by which trauma of which portion of the cervical sympathetic one can produce alopecic areas of the neck and the occipitoparietal