One of the difficulties in evaluating the role of emotional factors in skin disease has been the relative lack of satisfactory control studies. Suitable patients for such studies however, have not been easy to find. While patients with industrial and chemical dermatoses have been used for such studies, it has been difficult to exclude an emotional component in these cases.1Another source of controls has been the selection of patients at random, as was done by Hall-Smith and Norton.2In 150 so selected from among outpatients in a skin clinic, they found psychiatric factors to be of significance in 78.5% of their series. It seemed to me that a satisfactory source of patients for control studies could be provided by patients with pityriasis rosea. Here is one dermatologic condition in which emotional factors are, in all probability, of negligible significance. While the cause