Pathology: What May It Tell Us?

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) that affects approximately one million people worldwide and is the most common cause of nontraumatic disability in young adults (1). The cardinal features of the MS lesion, namely focal demyelination with relative axonal sparing, inflammation, and gliosis, were described and illustrated over 160 years ago by Carswell (1838), Cruveilher (1841), and Charcot (1868, 1880).