Why was autism formerly only a wealthy disease?

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Could also support the hygiene hypothesis and a number of other things. I don't think diagnosis alone can explain this. If these idiot savants were visible and being studied, it's not like they were hidden. I'm curious if he was just studying residents of asylums.

We observe the same thing today in rural areas in rich countries -- and in differences between countries. I'm curious why South Korea has such a high autism rate (twice as high as the U.S.) while Cambodia has hardly any. One thing I do recall from my visits there (to take the LSAT this time ) is one of the cleaning ladies in the hotel I where I was staying complained that "Chinese people are soooo dirty." And when I visited China, Chinese people seemed about like Americans. So maybe South Korea is excessively hygienic vs. the U.S. and other nations with lower autism rates while Cambodia is more like the environment in which our ancestors grew up and has little or no autism.

Wealthy people were the only people for whom people with disabilities could be nurtured enough to gain savant skills. Even NT or non-disabled poor people would not have the opportunity to be experts at the violin, chess, mathematics, etc. Heck, poor people got a very spotty education back then-- this is still when there was a sizable population in the US who couldn't read. (1) I'm sure there were probably a few "idiots" from the lower classes who were very good at whistling or something but nobody was going to write about that, especially since scientists of the time were pretty unconcerned about what the poor were up to. In fact, scientists of the period (i.e. Francis Galton) were busy making theories as to why the lower classes were inherently inferior to the wealthy classes, so no wonder they thought only the wealthy could have savants whereas the poor had only "idiots".

If you actually read the article, a guy named George Grabham disagrees with the whole savantism being more prevalent in the wealthy theory in 1875.