Chapter 1: The Wizard of Clapham Common
A little bit of an introduction to myself and these posts: while I have taught students with autism for 7 years, I wasn't aware of much of the history of autism prior to this book. Much like the author, I began to hear about autism around the year 2000, when people were talking about it in epidemic proportions. This first chapter does an excellent job of showing a brief history during the 18th century into the life of Henry Cavendish, a brilliant inventor who exhibited many of the signs of autism we might recognize today. Cavendish wore the same outfit until it was well out of fashion, at the same meal at dinner regularly, walked a route at the same time every evening, and his contemporaries described him as so shy and bashful that it caused them to think he had some kind of strange disease. One astronomer suggested that the best way to converse with Cavendish was to not look at him while talking, but to gaze elsewhere, and if the conversation co...