[HN Gopher] Donald Triplett was autism's "case 1"
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Donald Triplett was autism's "case 1"
Author : jkuria
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-07-15 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Donald Grey Triplett: The first boy diagnosed as autistic_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10944335 - Jan 2016 (16
| comments)
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| [dead]
| htag wrote:
| Grunya Sukhareva was studying (and published about, including in
| English) what we would now consider Autism in the 1920s. Perhaps
| it is because she was a woman, or because she was a Soviet, but
| histories often gives this credit to Leo Kanner or partial credit
| to Hans Asperger. I understand this is an obituary, but it does
| no one a service to indicate Donald Triplett was the first person
| to be treated for Autism.
| morelisp wrote:
| There is a subtle but critical distinction in medicine between
| describing a cluster of symptoms and diagnosing a new
| condition. AIUI Sukhareva did the former and Kanner (also
| citing Sukhareva in later publications) the latter.
|
| In particular, I don't think anyone is claiming
|
| > the first person to be treated for Autism.
|
| (Which depending on how you approach the question must either
| have been thousands of years before this, or could not happen
| until after Kanner proposed its existence). Rather the article
| is quite explicit,
|
| > The first man diagnosed as autistic
| benatkin wrote:
| "case 1" is in quotes here and it says _diagnosed_ , not
| _treated_. It doesn 't make the claim you're suggesting.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Was autism super rare historically? Surely there were plenty of
| cases over the centuries?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| It was far less common. There is no way that the usual
| arguments about better diagnosis criteria or other social
| reasons account for the orders of magnitude increase in autism
| diagnosis. Anyone here trying to tell you otherwise has an
| agenda against biological or partially biological explanations.
| [deleted]
| tom_ wrote:
| Could easily have been about the same, only with autistic
| people beaten, possibly literally, into unhappy submission.
| As with left-handedness and homosexuality, in many cases it's
| probably not impossible to pass unnoticed if needs really
| must.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| And most of the worst cases likely wouldn't have survived
| childhood.
| CitizenKane wrote:
| To our knowledge it has been at a steady level throughout human
| history. Kant was mentioned in this thread, Henry Cavendish was
| also thought to be autistic. From Wikipedia:
|
| > Cavendish was taciturn and solitary and regarded by many as
| eccentric. He communicated with his female servants only by
| notes. By one account, Cavendish had a back staircase added to
| his house to avoid encountering his housekeeper, because he was
| especially shy of women.
|
| There are other threads that go back further as well, and at
| least in certain cultures there's a fairly broad overlap
| between shamanism, autism, and related neurological conditions.
| I've seen some studies tracking certain genetic mutations back
| and some at least are thought to have come about when humans
| started becoming human. I haven't been able to find them again
| but there are quite a few studies that can be found via Google
| Scholar on the subject.
| Madmallard wrote:
| This is literally all conjecture.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| To our knowledge? What documented knowledge are you going off
| of? You have a source on incident rates of autism going back
| 10, 20, 50, 100, 150, 200 years?
| hammock wrote:
| >Was autism super rare historically?
|
| Yes. We have never had more autistic people than today, and
| cases in children began exploding in the mid-80s.
|
| Early prevalence was lower, centering at about 1 in 2000 for
| autism during the 60s-70s and about 1 in 1000 in the 80s,
| compared to today's 1 in 44.
|
| And it's not just that we started recognizing it better. Well
| after autism become well recognized it continued to increase
| among children.
|
| The latest estimate of autism prevalence--1 in 44--is up from
| the 1 in 88 rate reported in 2008 and more than double the 1 in
| 150 rate in 2000.
| dtech wrote:
| Do you have any sources that back up increasing prevalism
| over better recognition and broader diagnostic criteria?
| Afaik almost everyone chalks it up to those 2.
| maxbond wrote:
| Nope, we're just learning to recognize it better,
| destigmatizing it so more people seek out a diagnosis in the
| first place, recognizing it's a spectrum and that people with
| a more subtle expression of autism can still be diagnosed,
| etc, etc, etc.
|
| I know someone in their 50s who was diagnosed recently.
| They've been who they are their whole life. I know a lot of
| adults who have similar personality traits that haven't been
| diagnosed - I don't know how many would be, if they were to
| speak to a professional, but it's not 0. (I think there's
| maybe a 25% chance I could get an autism diagnosis, were I to
| talk to my doctor about it. People have encouraged me to, but
| I personally don't see how that information would be useful
| to me.)
|
| These adults are the "missing" children from your statistics.
| oxymoron wrote:
| I think it's at least relevant to note that a lot of things
| relating to autism was completely redefined in DSM-V. DSM-IV
| had many different diagnosis such as classic autism, autism
| spectrum disorder, aspergers and PDD-NOS (Pervasive
| Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified). All of
| those was merged into a single diagnosis titled "Autism
| Spectrum Disorder", where the criterias are communication
| difficulties and stereotypical behavior. My understanding is
| that this was mostly due to poor diagnosis stability with the
| prior set of diagnosis. It seems at least plausible that this
| general simplification of diagnosis criteria has contributed
| to an increase in the number of diagnosis. (It's also worth
| remembering that any comparison over time has to bundle all
| of the previously distinct diagnosis to come up with an
| apples-to-apples comparison.)
| guerrilla wrote:
| I wonder about this too but there are people who definitely
| seem to have been autistic, e.g. Kant, so it can't have been
| that extremely rare.
| jimmytidey wrote:
| Because of his regular schedule?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Quoting Quora of all things here but:
|
| > As autistic myself and student of philosophy, I'd say:
| probably, yes. I've read books that contain testimonials
| from Kant's students and collegues. He showed ASD traits
| such as: (emotional and almost pathological) attachment to
| very strict routines; inability to control irritability and
| stress; inability to focus properly in certain situations
| (a famous example was given by his students: one day at a
| lesson he got stressed and refused to continue his speech
| because he felt unable to concentrate due to a missing
| button on a student's jacket); he admitted to feel the
| inability to tell lies, even if for good purposes; in his
| writings he excuses many times for not being able to be
| clear about what he meant because he had an hard time
| putting himself in the reader's shoes; he was described as
| socially akward and indifferent to social norms and
| costumes (famous was is dated and old-fashioned way of
| dressing), and to social relationships. We can't of course
| be sure about Kant being autistic, but there is a
| possibility.
|
| His "regular schedule" was more than that... It was a very
| detailed and strict routine which he was extremely attached
| to. I think his way of thinking so abstractly and also
| being unable to summarize himself are also things that
| resonate for me.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Most of the biographical stuff I see about Kant emphasizes
| his stereotypical Prussian traits.
|
| Now that I think about "Prussian virtues" and autism have
| some overlap.
| yung_steezy wrote:
| Wow TIL! The categorical imperative is making more sense now
| NikkiA wrote:
| It would just have been labelled either 'eccentricity' or
| 'mental retardation' depending on the functioning level in
| antiquity, I imagine.
| furyofantares wrote:
| > It would just have been labelled either 'eccentricity' or
| 'mental retardation' depending on the functioning level in
| antiquity, I imagine.
|
| Or, sometimes, in 1985.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The article says the doctors weren't familiar with what they
| were seeing.
|
| It was rare enough that psychiatrists, who were very much
| looking for new ailments, just weren't seeing what he had in
| other people.
| derekp7 wrote:
| I wonder if general education had a factor in hiding some
| cases in the past. For example, is there much visible
| difference between an under-socialized / under-educated yet
| neurotypical person vs someone who is neurdivergent with that
| same education level and social/work life? And do the
| differences show up more when early general education is
| available? (Hopefully I phrased that question correctly).
| hourago wrote:
| > depending on the functioning level in antiquity, I imagine.
|
| The classical difference between them is money. When a
| powerful person acted "crazy" the term used was
| "eccentricity".
| lolinder wrote:
| That's the meme, and it probably did go that way (crazy ->
| eccentric), but it's also true that someone who's just a
| little bit off would be called eccentric.
|
| It would not have been a very effective euphemism for a
| crazy rich person if it didn't also have the nicer meaning
| for everyone, rich or poor.
| NikkiA wrote:
| Mostly, yes. but there were clearly common people in
| history that were described as 'somewhat eccentric' but
| still managed a normal-ish life otherwise. The chances are
| most of those were people who would today be labelled 'high
| functioning autistic' or 20 years ago would have been
| labelled as having aspergers.
|
| What money/class-status afforded was the ability to be
| _more_ eccentric without being pushed into an institution.
| dkga wrote:
| I really appreciate that the town embraced and protected Don. May
| he rest in peace.
| MollyRealized wrote:
| https://archive.is/20230708014417/https://www.economist.com/...
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Since then the diagnosis has literally never been stable and gets
| effectively reinterpreted every year to call an increasingly
| large amount of the population disordered and in need of a
| growing cabal of charlatans who are needed to cure them.
|
| Total failure of a diagnosis and I see zero evidence that its
| introduction has had a positive effect on society since nobody
| has even attempted to measure if calling more and more of the
| population names and insisting we treat them differently than
| others constitutes healthcare.
|
| Can't wait until we pass this medical obsession with behaviour
| and people fitting in with social norms symbolized by the
| diagnosis of "autism" and move onto a medical field that deals
| with the real problems of the "autistics" like digestive issues,
| sensory issues, social anxiety, etc instead of just slapping
| people with the label of "disordered" and having teacher
| assistants stalk them specifically in class or segregrating them
| into special classrooms and making this normal/disabled
| distinction to give them a complex.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| As the article mentions, Donald was featured in a documentary
| called "In A Different Key". I highly recommend it. Very
| informative about autism in general, the good, the bad, and
| everything in between.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| The Economist's obituary section is usually well worth the read,
| and this is a nice example. You can also listen to it through
| their free Intelligence podcast.
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