OUR INTEREST in familial Hodgkin's disease stems from the curious coincidence of the occurrence of fatal Hodgkin's disease in man and wife. The man was found to have the disease in 1943 and died of it in January, 1945, at the age of 44; the wife had the disease in 1946 and died in February, 1949, at the age of 41. There was no blood relationship between the two. Thomas Hodgkin in 1832 described a symptom complex of superficial lymphnode enlargement, splenomegaly, cachexia, and anemia, with a fatal termination. However, only a few of the cases were of proved Hodgkin's disease by present standards. Nevertheless, from those beginnings has grown a vast literature on the lymphoma group of diseases without conclusive results. There is still controversy concerning whether Hodgkin's disease is a neoplasm or an infectious granuloma,1 although the laboratory and clinical findings suggest the infectious or viral nature