Abstract
The history of coming to grips with what autism is and its etiology has been tortuous ― if not tortured. By 1908 the word autism was defined as a schizophrenic who was withdrawn or self-absorbed. Some decades later Leo Kanner [1] decided that autism was based on children with “a powerful desire for aloneness.†In the 1960’s psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, picking up on another aspect of Kanner’s [2] observations, thought autism was simply based upon mothers not loving their children enough. Then came the twin research studies which purported autism to be caused by genetics or biological differences in brain development. Yet the consensus that Autism is from an intrauterine infection had also been growing, bolstered more recently by Patterson’s [3] and Fatemi’s [4] studies. However, the question would still remain: which infection? This, of course, remains unknown. Until 1980 autism in the US is still called “childhood schizophrenia†and in some parts of the world, it still is. By the same token, there has been, for some time, an extensive body of medical literature which ties schizophrenia to chronic infection –some time before when Rzhetsky [5] in 2007, used a proof-of-concept bio-statistical analysis of 1.5 million patient records, finding significant genetic overlap in humans with autism, schizophrenia and tuberculosis.
Highlights
The history of coming to grips with what autism is and its etiology has been tortuous ― if not tortured
As California’s Department of Developmental Services stood by incredulously, it witnessed a tripling of California’s autism rate, and all but 15 percent of cases were in children
Total ovarian destruction occurs in 3 percent of women with pelvic tuberculosis, again the site where Down syndrome’s and autism’s chromosomal abnormalities usually occur [30]
Summary
The history of coming to grips with what autism is and its etiology has been tortuous ― if not tortured. For various reasons, many did survive –leaving in its wake, among other conditions –Down syndrome, the autistic and the ‘mentally disabled’ Until this significant pool of infected neonates, infants, and toddlers was fully evaluated for such protean mental complications, Arnold Rich truly couldn’t understand psychiatrists fussing over “inborn” features of a “psychiatric” disease, whether labeled autism or anything else that very possibly was caused by organic infection. When Johns Hopkins pathologist William Henry Welch studied under psychiatrist Meynert, it was in the late nineteenth century, a time of fear that tuberculosis would destroy the entire civilization of Europe It was when the first massive increase in psychiatric illness and confinement to mental asylums occurred [53]. Schmorl’s work again showed that, tuberculous infection of the placenta in tuberculous mothers was much more common than formerly believed [98]
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