https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/donald-triplett-1st-person-diagnosed-autism-dies-89-100150208
I don't know how familiar people are with Triplett, but he was the first person diagnosed with the syndrome that we now know as autism. The word "autism" was coined earlier, but Triplett was the first person to be called "autistic" in today's use of the word. Triplett's parents were wealthy bankers in a small town in Mississippi, and in their desperation to figure out what was wrong with Donald, they wound up at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where Donald was observed by Leo Kanner. Kanner published a scholarly paper detailing Triplett and eight other boys who had a psychological disorder that Kanner called "autism". The paper was unnoticed amid the chaos of World War 2, and was rescued from obscurity in the 60s by the loathsome Bruno Bettelheim, who publicized autism in Freudian terms as a disease caused by unloving mothers. It wasn't until the late 1990s that autism was really recognized. But Donald Triplett was Patient Zero.
I don't know how familiar people are with Triplett, but he was the first person diagnosed with the syndrome that we now know as autism. The word "autism" was coined earlier, but Triplett was the first person to be called "autistic" in today's use of the word. Triplett's parents were wealthy bankers in a small town in Mississippi, and in their desperation to figure out what was wrong with Donald, they wound up at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where Donald was observed by Leo Kanner. Kanner published a scholarly paper detailing Triplett and eight other boys who had a psychological disorder that Kanner called "autism". The paper was unnoticed amid the chaos of World War 2, and was rescued from obscurity in the 60s by the loathsome Bruno Bettelheim, who publicized autism in Freudian terms as a disease caused by unloving mothers. It wasn't until the late 1990s that autism was really recognized. But Donald Triplett was Patient Zero.
