VASCULAR PATTERN IN VARIOUS LESIONS OF THE HUMAN CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

Abstract

The benzidine stain (Lepehne¹and Pickworth²) has provided a new method for morphologic study of the vascular pattern of the brain in health and disease. The normal vascular pattern of the brain has frequently been investigated by methods of injection, the outstanding work being Pfeifer's extensive monographs.³The application of injection methods to pathologic material, however, has been limited. Pfeifer⁴investigated by injection the vascular pathologic picture in tuberculosis of the monkey brain and Putnam⁵that in lesions of multiple sclerosis in man. Aside from these isolated studies, the method has not found wide application. The reason for this may be found in the obvious drawbacks of injection methods when applied to pathologic material: (1) the uncertainty of securing adequate injection in postmortem material and (2) the inevitably artificial picture obtained in that the mass injected, being introduced at an arbitrary pressure, cannot show accurately