Antibodies to Brain and Their Relation to Demyelinization

THE occurrence of encephalomyelitis or other neurologic disorders during the Pasteur treatment of rabies has stimulated interest in recent years in the relation of parenteral injections of brain to demyelinization in the nervous system. A short review of the subject is given by Hurst as a preliminary to his own report on an attempt to produce such lesions in rabbits. Hurst (1932) and later Schwentker and Rivers (1934) were unable to demonstrate any changes in the nervous system of rabbits receiving repeated injections of brain. Rivers (1933, 1935) and his co-workers have, however, shown large areas of demyelinization in the cerebrum of eight of sixteen monkeys which had received from 46 to 85 intramuscular injections of brain emulsion and brain extract. They likened the picture to that of Schilder's disease in man, although many eosinophils and unusual giant cells not characteristic of this disease were observed about the areas of myelin destruction. It has been shown by Brandt, Guth, and Muller (1926) and Witebsky and Steinfeld (1928) that brain antibodies are formed in rabbits by the injection of