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 continues to not make eye contact. 

    Cavendish performed studies on the atmosphere, lightning, gravitational pull, and more. He discovered that hydrogen existed in the air before anyone else knew what it was, calling it inflammable air. 

    Paul Dirac, who won the Nobel prize in 1933, is another scientist who may also have had autism before it was given a name. Dirac is someone who reconciled quantum physics with Einstein's theory of relativity and was also considered by his contemporaries as a walking enigma to to anyone who encountered him. 

    When autism was first "discovered," the men who discovered it were primarily looking at a disorder in children, but it's clear that through the years, people with autism have existed and found their way through life. Not only that, but some like Cavendish and Dirac have made such significant contributions to society is hard to imagine what the world would look like without them. 

Silberman, S. (2015) Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity. Penguin       Random House LLC.