What’s your take? I’m not sure if I know of an historic case of it like IDK maybe 200 or 150 years ago but nowadays I have several cases near of autistic people, so what do you think is old or new?
Others have answered but I feel obliged to add this.
Until the early 1900s, “mild” mental illness such as autism just didn’t exist in a medical sense. People were “odd”, “eccentric” etc and even after autism was formally recognised and studied in the 1940s it was virtually unheard of. Again, people were odd, a bit weird or eccentric.
There are no records of diagnosed cases of autism or similar before the 1900s because nobody recognised them for what they were.
Serious mental health issues have been recognised for thousands of years. Records of diagnoses of “lunacy” and “insanity” go back to the 1400s in the UK. Back then the cure was imprisonment in a cage and with regular blood letting and being plunged in cold water.
Back then the cure was imprisonment in a cage and with regular blood letting and being plunged in cold water.
And by drilling holes in the skull. Plus probably various other horrible ‘treatments’ that just created extra problems without fixing the original (and very vaguely understood) issue.
Autism as a diagnosis is relatively new, but people would have always had traits that would be thought of as nowadays as autistic. As an example, Rube Waddell was a professional baseballer in 1897 who was so fascinated by firetrucks that he would run off the field mid-game to chase them.
Is gravity something new or did it exist before Newton described it?
Here’s a metaphor. With technological advancement we’re discovering new stars every day. Does that mean they just appeared?
The old joke “what was the tallest mountain before Mt. Everest was discovered?”
“Mt. Everest”
Olympus Mons
Mouna Kea, it’s got a larger base to tip hight, it’s just mostly under water.
Well, if no one could observe them, you could say that they both existed and not existed.
The word is fairly new. But so is a shitton of other medical diagnosis like “cardiomyopathy”, “congenital heart disease”, " carditis", “aortic aneurysm”, “peripheral artery disease”, and on and on
I feel like suddenly all kids are autistic nowadays, I’ve talked about it with my parents they are 70ish and teachers and they both say in the years they worked there weren’t as many kids with some condition. I feel like maybe the human DNA has degraded too much in 2 or 3 generations.
Scientific consensus is that we now recognise and diagnose autism better than ever. Previously children that struggled in school would be labelled as troubled or slow or any number of other things. The thing about autism is that like many other things it is a spectrum, and thus previously many people with mild autism would have just cruised through and been thought of as odd or antisocial. Often when really questioned, people like your parents can think of a few people like this from their school days that might now fit the definition of autism spectrum disorder.
Also, it’s worth noting that human DNA does not and cannot degrade in any manner you suggest and that kind of reasoning has unscientific and innapropriate connotations that might associate you with very disagreeable groups.
Roughly 95% of all new autism cases in the last 10 years can be accounted for in the broader definition of what autism is.
Plus the idea that DNA has “degraded” and that’s what causes autism is, frankly, so stupid as to be hilarious.
I dont believe teachers or parents to be qualified for such diagnosis. It could be that the kids are angry, annoyed, or annoying, and people think it’s autism because they saw one once in a movie. Remember that adults are not very smart in general.
Another theory could be that those 70 years old people are boomers that have been spanked a lot and are more quiet compared to kids whose parents let them do anything (too much freedom and not enough education).
Anyway, I wouldn’t trust people to judge anything medical. My boomer parents say stupid things most of the time, yet they do it confidently and think their opinion is the only valid one.
A dumb opinion would be that not caring about others and saying stupid stuff is “autistic,” are all the boomers autists after all? See what I did?
I feel like maybe the human DNA has degraded too much in 2 or 3 generations.
Ancient Greeks notwithstanding, being non-heterosexual was considered a disease to be eliminated or cured until people finally accepted that it was a natural part of being an animal. Would you say being gay is a consequence of flawed genetics, or would you like to try phrasing that remark a bit differently?
Seems like the consensus taking shape in these comments, the way I understand it anyway, is that the only new thing is pathologising neurodivergence and beginning to actually accept such people into society. Treating it as something new or out of control is merely a reaction to new norms.
A lot of kids are not neurodivergent, still. But there are enough that school budgets for special needs in many or most places are very badly under-provisioned. I worry that if schools are not going to get massively higher funding, they will be faced with either under-serving neurodivergent kids like they used to, or fundamentally rethinking some things.
I’ve talked about it with my parents they are 70ish and teachers and they both say in the years they worked there weren’t as many kids diagnosed with some condition
I can almost guarantee they worked with tons if autistic kids, they just didn’t know it.
Why do I say that? Because I’ve had multiple teachers tell me that my diagnosed AuDHD kid isn’t autistic. Clearly, the teachers who only see the kids while masking and yell at them when they act out would know better than a trained professional or the parents who see them when they feel safe and don’t have the energy to mask anymore.
I choose to believe that autism appeared only after the invention of railway, and you can’t convince me otherwise.
I can’t find it right now but if I could I’d post the one about the ancient greek or roman dude with a interest in ships that would watch them enter and leave port and knew each one by name
I just also searched for that meme and gave up, but lo!
I think it was more specifically the creation of Thomas the Train engine.
He was a tank engine!
I don’t think the codex astartes has something for dealing with that kind of machine spirit
Come on. We all know it’s because the vaccines
Even as recently as 30 or 40 years ago, “problem” children would be hidden away, either in the home or sent to some sort of facility. Neuro divergence was a hidden issue.
I was “easily distracted” and “underperformed” and “could do better” at school. Always the “weird” kid. Only diagnosed when I was an adult because “autism” just wasn’t really a thing*. This was 40+ years ago. The general treatment approach was getting The Belt haha or sent to my room, or sent to my gran’s, or sent “out to play”.
*edit: when I was a kid
That sounds exactly like my story though, by the looks of it, I am a bit younger than you.
And before that, we were doppelgangers that had stolen people’s children away: https://youtube.com/shorts/WH5zYErWmAQ
I know you’re not supposed to diagnose historical figures, but Kant is like the textbook definition of autistic. He made the rule that he would smoke one pipeful of tobacco a day, and lamented for years that he couldn’t find a bigger pipe. His moral philosophy also demonstrates the kind of rigid thinking that is characteristic of autism.
I never correlated this but it sticks. Another notable probably autistic figure was Isaac Newton
We used to mark all sorts of neurodivergent people as “crazy” or “witches”. But I’d also be interested in a historical source if someone has one.
Just because it’s diagnosed easier now doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.
“Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will smile at [my predicament], because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought, poetry or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain tissues.” -Schopie complaining about overstimulation
It has been around as long as humans have.
(Autists perspective)
It’s not new at all, the term has been around decades and itself has been around literally forever. It’s a different brain development. There are many historical persons which are thought or know to have been autists (e. G. Einstein, Lewis Carroll, Dan Akroyd to just name a few over a longer timespan.)
It’s also not having autism (as an optional trait) but rather being Autist (as a defining foundation).
Just like, say, mutations that also always happened to certain degrees.
Feel free to ask. Also, of course, that is my personal opinion where it is not scientifically proven.
