Eduard Rindfleisch (1836-1908)
Further insight into the pathophysiology of MS was provided by Eduard Rindfleisch, a 19th century German pathologist, who analysed post-mortem brain samples from MS patients (8).
In 1863 (8), Rindfleisch reported a key finding that paved the way for theories of inflammatory involvement in the aetiology of MS. He noticed that, consistently in all the specimens, a blood vessel was present at the centre of each lesion. His illustrations of the plaques are seen in the slide (8).
Rindfleisch wrote:
"If one looks carefully at freshly altered parts of the white matter ... one perceives already with the naked eye a red point or line in the middle of each individual focus,.. the lumen of a small vessel engorged with blood ... All this leads us to search for the primary cause of the disease in an alteration of individual vessels and their ramifications; All vessels running inside the foci, but also those which traverse the immediately surrounding but still intact parenchyma are in a state characteristic of chronic inflammation." (8)
Rindfleisch came to believe that a primary state of inflammation was responsible for the demyelination (8).
