THE PURPOSE of this paper is to present a severe case of herpes zoster oticus with complete paralysis of the facial nerve, involvement of both the vestibular and the cochlear branches of the eighth nerve and unusual findings in the cerebrospinal fluid. The patient was recently treated at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospitals. The relevant literature will be briefly reviewed. Herpes zoster has been known since ancient times. It was called zona by the Greeks1 and was considered a cutaneous disease for centuries. Bright2 (1831) and Henley2 (1840), cited by Ebstein, first pointed out that herpes zoster was a cutaneous manifestation of a nerve disease involving the sensory portion of the spinal nerves. The first reported autopsy on a case of herpes zoster was that of von Barensprung,2 in 1861, who demonstrated inflammatory lesions at the posterior root ganglions. That the disease could involve cranial nerves was demonstrated by many observers,