An Extremely Rare Disorder
Leo Kanner
[2015 Aug] The Age of Autism Week In a Number: 1938 "Olmsted and Blaxill (again) show that Autism had a start date, and it was after Eli Lilly invented and began selling a water soluble form of mercury in fungicide and vaccine preservation."
[2010] Best of AofA: Autism From a Flu Shot? The Ominous Clue From Kanner's Autism Case #7
DISCOVERING AUTISM: LEO KANNER IN 1943
An Extremely Rare Disorder
“Since 1938, there have come to our attention a number of children whose condition differs so markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far that each case merits—and, I hope will eventually receive—a detailed consideration of its fascinating peculiarities....
“These characteristics form a unique “syndrome”, not heretofore reported,
which seems to be rare enough, yet is probably more frequent than is indicated
by the paucity of observed cases.”
-Leo Kanner, “Autistic disturbances of affective contact”, Nervous Child,
1943
“The fact that an average of not more than eight patients per year [over
twenty years] could be diagnosed with reasonable assurance as autistic in a
center serving as a sort of diagnostic clearinghouse, speaks for the infrequency
of the disease, especially if one considers that they recruit themselves from
all over the North American continent...”
-Leo Kanner, “The specificity of early infantile autism” Acta
Paedopsychiatrie, 1958
[2009 April] Olmsted on Autism: Hopkins Loses Early Case File
Quotes
Kanner was the world’s leading expert in child psychiatry. He was the
leader in the field at Johns Hopkins. In 1935, he wrote a textbook that was over
500 pages long that had detailed, exhaustive descriptions of every possible
malady of childhood that he and his colleagues had ever seen. There’s not one
mention of autism in that 1935 textbook.
When he wrote his paper, published
in 1943, he said, “Since 1938 there have come to our attention a number of
children whose condition differed so markedly and uniquely from anything seen
before that each case merits – and I hope will receive – a detailed
investigation of its fascinating peculiarities.” So here is the world’s leading
expert on child psychiatry who has already written a textbook. In 1943 he writes
that in the last five years, we’ve started to see children and they’re unlike
any children we’ve ever seen before.
And he only saw 11 of them. And one
of the things we’ve described is that people came from all over the country, all
over the world to visit at Hopkins. The notion that autism was around at a rate
of 1 in 100 or even a fraction of that is absurd. So the genetic argument at
this point collapses on its face. It doesn’t even meet the basic tests of logic
and common sense.
[2010 Sept] Interview
with Dan Olmsted, Mark Blaxill: 'Age of Autism-Mercury, Medicine, and a Manmade
Epidemic'