LUPUS, a disease of the skin occurring in two varieties. Lupus vulgaris, tuberculosis of the skin, is caused by B. tuber culosis and is characterized by the formation in the skin or mucous membrane of small nodules consisting of inflammatory cells liable to coalescence, retrograde change, ulceration and destruction of the tissues, and, if it heals, to the subsequent f or mation of permanent white scars. It is most commonly seen in early life, and in women, and occurs chiefly on the face, about the nose, cheeks or ears. But it may also affect the body or limbs. It first shows itself as small, slightly prominent, nodules covered with thin crusts or scabs. The disease may be superficial, in which case both the ulceration and the resulting scar are slight (lupus non exedens) ; or the ulcerative process may be deep and extensive, destroying a large portion of the palate, nose or cheek, and leaving much disfigurement (lupus exedens). Formerly scraping with a sharp spoon, application of caustics or carbonic acid snow were employed but now treatment by ultra-violet light, Finsen rays, or X-rays is used with better results. Prolonged X-ray treatment, however, has in several instances been followed some years later by cancer in the irradiated area. The other and less serious variety, lupus erythematosus, occurs on the nose and adjacent portions of the cheeks in the form of red patches covered with thin scales, underneath which are seen the widened openings of the sebaceous ducts. With a longitudinal
patch on the nose and spreading symmetrical patches on each cheek the appearance is usually that of a large butterfly. It is slow in disappearing, but does not leave a scar. As medicines, cod-liver oil, iron and arsenic are useful in both varieties.
or LOKMAN, the name of two, if not of three, persons famous in Arabian tradition. The first was of the family of 'Ad, and is said to have built the great dike of Marib and to have received the gift of life as long as that of seven vultures, each of which lived 8o years. The name of the second Luqman, called "Luqman the Sage," occurs in the Koran (31, I 1). Two accounts of him are found. According to Mastildi (i. Iio) he was a Nubian freedman who lived in the time of David. According to some commentators on the Koran he was the son of Balura, one of the sons of Job's sister or maternal aunt. Derenbourg in his Fables de Loqmdn le sage (185o) identifies Batura with Beoi, and believes the name Luqman to be a translation of Balaam. The grave of Luqman was shown on the east coast of the lake of Tiberias, also in Yemen.
The so-called Fables of Luqmdn are known to have existed in the 13th century, but are not mentioned by any Arabian writer. They were edited by Erpenius (Leyden, 1615) and have been reprinted many times. For the relation of these to similar literature in other lands, see J. Jacobs's edition of Caxton's Fables of Aesop, vol. i. (1889).