Vienna and some selected Autism History
Monty aged 12 with ASD, “You have been transformed into an Australopithecus afarensis, you walked upright more than 3 million years ago. Your picture is attached. This morphing-station is a co-production between Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria and the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington” We can never know if they had autism 3 million years ago, but it certainly is not a recent phenomenon. Today’s post, prompted by a visit to Vienna, is a collection of historical episodes that I thought I should include in this blog, before I forget them. Austria, as well as being home to an excellent natural history museum, where you can see what your children might have looked like had they been born 3 million years ago, is the home of autism. Both Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner were Austrian. Kanner was later educated in Berlin and then, being Jewish, had the foresight to emigrate in 1924 to the US. In 1930 he developed the first c...