DISCOVERY OF "SILVER CELLS"
In 1928 Steiner1 announced that he had demonstrated spirochetes in the brain of a patient with multiple sclerosis by means of an improved silver impregnation method. He has since described spirochetes in other brains showing typical lesions and free from suspicion of syphilis. In all of seven of twenty-eight cases of multiple sclerosis examination of the brain gave positive results.2 Some of these structures lay free in the tissues and others within cells. Some were knobbed, looped or stippled. These spirochetes, which were slightly winding and flatter than Spirochaeta pallida, Steiner caller Spirochaeta myelophthora. He explained their rarity in the brain by their extreme lability, which causes their rapid disappearance directly after the onset of the attack.Far more common than the complete rodlike structures were certain characteristic elements which Steiner named "silver cells" (Silberzellen). They consist of spherical bodies, about the size of