Steiner's1 contention that spirochetes may be found in the brain tissue of patients with multiple sclerosis has been viewed generally with considerable skepticism. Using the method described in his monograph, we have searched for spirochetes and silver cells alike, since Steiner claimed that only in the tissues of persons with a spirochetal disease are silver cells present. Rogers2 found silver cells in the brain tissue of eleven patients with disseminated sclerosis but none in the brain tissue of four patients with other diseases. Following this lead we examined tissue from the brains of eleven patients with multiple sclerosis (and one other with a borderline case), of two patients with dementia paralytica and of fifty-one patients with various disease conditions.
Blocks of tissue were cut from the white matter contiguous to the right and the left lateral ventricle and whenever possible from the fourth ventricle. Three stained, mounted specimens