I don’t remember anything about autism in the 50’s. Was it called something else then?
It was always autism, but the definition was very narrow. The classic definition, iirc, is the cases where the person is basically wholly non responsive. Those cases are pretty rare. The new definitions has expanded in all kinds of directions, thus adopting more and more cases.
It was called autism. It was a fraction as prevalent
Grew in major suburb with mega crowds of baby boom kids all formula fed one after the other Irish twins Irish triplets coming along at too fast a pace for anyone to keep track of them
A few had mental slowing. Autism? Cerebral palsy- yes.
Now, every family I know is touched with autism. An in law brought her child in for a round of A ton of vaccines at once. She was too busy to space them out. That was in 1996, when even then, the Germans and the Japanese were spacing them
Kid was fine. Came out never having had a normal conversation again.
“I don’t remember anything about autism in the 50’s. Was it called something else then?”
I don’t think there was any name for it. I was born in 54 and had a neighbor kid who was Rain Man level autistic and no one knew at the time what his situation was.
“I don’t remember anything about autism in the 50’s. Was it called something else then?”
I don’t know what they called it, but I’m sure it was rare; it still is, but has changed from “autism” to “autism spectrum” so parents and schools can conspire to defraud the government (read: taxpayers). It is used to describe anyone who might bring down a school’s average grades or reflect poor parenting skills (unfortunately lumping them with the genuine rarer cases).
I remember that Alzheimers wasn't invented yet so old people simply were called senile.......