Historical Approach
Before autism was well understood, children in Britain and America would often be put in institutions on the instruction of doctors and the parents told to forget about them. Observer journalist Christopher Stevens, father of an autistic child, reports how a British doctor told him that after a child was admitted, usually "nature would take its course" and the child would die due to the prevalence of tuberculosis.
Read more about this topic: Autism Therapies
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or approach:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends.”
—Robert Havighurst (20th century)