The authors emphasize the importance of the search of cryptococcus in every patient with signs and symptoms of meningitis, meningo-encephalitis or intracranial hypertension and with inflammatory changes in the spinal fluid. With this idea in mind, they have performed the India ink test in the spinal fluid of every patient in the 1953-1972 period and were able to make the diagnosis of cryptococcal meningitis in 35 cases. Furthermore, there was another case with granuloma localized in the spinal cord. These 36 cases were distributed more or less regularly during these 20 years of observation, suggesting that there was no increase in the incidence. The age of the patients ranged between 11 and 59 years, mostly between 30 and 50 years. Only 8 of them were female patients. Of the 12 patients seen at the time when there was no real treatment, only one outlived to get the benefit of modern therapy. When amphotericin B was available, 24 patients with cryptococcal meningitis were treated and 11 had a successful outcome with spinal fluid normalization; 8 patients have not finished the complete series of injections and left hospital after the first clinical improvements; finally, 5 patients have failed to improve and had a fatal outcome. The authors have no experience with 5-fluorocytosine, because they used it only in one case and in association with amphotericin B.