Historical Figures Sometimes Considered Autistic
A retrospective diagnosis is the practice of identifying an illness in a historical figure using modern knowledge, methods and disease classifications.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were first identified by Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner in the 1940s, and it wasn't until many years later that they were formally recognised by the medical community. Journalists, academics and autism professionals have speculated that certain famous or notable historical people had autism or other autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome. Such speculation is controversial and little of it is undisputed. For example, several autism researchers speculate that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had autism or other conditions, while other researchers say there is not sufficient evidence to draw such conclusions.
Read more about Historical Figures Sometimes Considered Autistic: Validity of Retrospective Diagnoses, Specific Individuals
Famous quotes containing the words historical, figures and/or considered:
“We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“She, while her lover pants upon her breast,
Can mark the figures on an Indian chest.”
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“This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound off with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening.... It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which the word “beauteous” was over-fondled, and human experience referred to as “life’s page,” was up to the usual average.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)