What did people call Autism before 1944?

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That's an interesting question. Institutions for the feeble minded existed at one time, so maybe they were called "feeble minded"?
"Moron" was a label used by doctors for people who blended in with everyone else yet didn't possess as high an IQ. "Morons" were thought to eventually end up in jail because it was theorized such people resorted to illegal activities that were easy ways to make quick cash since they didn't have the mental capacities to earn a living. It was thought this condition was inherited and made someone predisposed to criminal behaviour.
Below is a link to a story about a Dr Goddard who initiated a forced sterilization Eugenics program in the US . Later, Goddard realized he erred and withdrew his previous held belief, that "feeble mindedness" is an inherited condition.

http://www.vineland.org/history/trainin ... genics.htm

You can click on "History" after you click the link and it tells you about a vocational school called "Vineland Training School". It opened on March 1, 1888 as "The New Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feebleminded Children" and was established to meet the needs of mentally ret*d children. It's a good look at the history of such places in the US since it was the first of it's kind to open here.

Feeble Minded

Idiot Savant

Mentally ret*d

Useless Eaters

Lives Unworthy of Life

Schizophrenics

Cretins

I would say about the same thing as Spokane Girl, and it seems like she had an interest here.

People that were REAL HFA or AS would certainly have been called shy, ecentric, wierd. LFAs would have been called stupid, etc... Luckily, eventually, people realized that parts of the brain are specialized, and some people seem dumb in some areas but are far better in others. As for social security, it was enacted in 1937, but not supposed to pay benefits until 1942. Those adults, that hadn't paid in, Apparently, didn't get any money. They DID have money for kids, etc....

Nutty professors maybe. Or mad geniuses. Those types have always been known. Also before any mercury vaccines or the like.

Schizophrenia is my bet for the verbal AS/HFA types.

Brain damaged for the nonverbal LFA types.

I suspect they might have been called
changelings or the corresponding term
for whatever fairies left behind in place of a child.

The idea would be that the child that the parents had
known and loved was taken away from them by
someone or something; I suspect that Autism Speaks
and similar organizations think about autism in
something like this manner.

Good answer!

The name I've heard, that was still in some use when my mum was growing up (and perhaps was only from her area, since no one has said it yet) was, "backwards," (and this was after 1944).

Even though autism had a 'proper' name after 1944, autistic people were still thought of as "backwards" (and other such names) by people who were not in psychiatric professions for time afterwards.

I've thought it was a funny word to use. To say someone is backwards sounds like saying they are looking in a different direction from everyone else.

Of course, "backwardsness," is LFA. People with HFA would be called, in my mum's youth, "queer" (in its original meaning as strange).

I think you touched a more complex layer: Prior modern psychology and psychiatric there were the so-called "mad ones", which were often locked up and the others of which some were seen as eccentric.

Modern science provides us with more exact understanding of different types of human behaviour and conditions, but also stresses everything into categories and seeks causes. On a scientific level this is great because we learn more but what makes us human and so different, I far from being certain that this labelling also does benefit our daily live. What is easier to accept: A person with a strange behaviour or a person with a medical condition?

I do not have here an answer.

It is a medieval hangover.

Started when the Greeks separated mind from body. I think it was Aristotle. Of course DesCartes didn't help matters.

So in medieval times if you had a fever or broken leg, you went to the barber surgeon.
If you had something amiss with your mind, you were "in-sane" (from the Latin "un-clean"), were possessed of demons, and went to the priest.

So though we know cognitively from neuroscience that mental illness is a brain anomaly, - and that the brain is attached to the body - we feel it has something to do with evil spirits and un-clean-ness. (Feel vs. think -- different parts of the brain.) And all that touches it - the patients, the medicines, the clinicians - are therefore "un-clean."

Since it is not cognitive, but instead feel, - all the education in the world will not help.
Education addresses the cognitive brain.

Too far fetched?

Why then is your behavioural health benefit different from the rest of your medical coverage?

Go to any hospital and ask where the psychiatry ward is. Chances are good it is in an entirely different building apart from the hospital. Or in a totally free-standing hospital. Do we have singular free-standing hospitals for the liver?

Why does a mental health record have to be kept separate from the medical record, hidden? Because it is "un-clean" perhaps?

Why do so many take an antibiotic with ease and even demand these - but an antidepressant? Is it "un-clean"?

Just look with a sharp and critical mind. You'll find numerous other examples.

TobyZ" posted (in part): There has to be some common words in various cultures...?...
What about Autism and other "mental differences" that aren't always obvious on the outside? I mean these disorders have only had since 1944 to educate against the social rejection?
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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

ADHD is the current term (2010) for the lifelong neurological challenge which previously has been known as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), Hyperactivity, Hyperkinesis, Organic Brain Syndrome, Minimal Brain Dysfunction, and Minimal Brain Damage. (Source: ADHD BB)

Weirdo, nutsy fagin.

ruveyn

I supposse there are several names that were used to describe autistic people before the word came into existence though for me, it would be heretic as, anyone whom did not act like others either in a social or mental context might come under that label but, I'm merely making conjecture as, I would not wish to say something outlandish or foolsih on my part...

It is worth noting that according to folklore, the way you could tell a child had been replaced by a changeling was that they were unusually cranky or moody, disliked being touched, refused to look at anyone's face - beginning to sound familiar? Usually, the changeling was swapped for the real baby at around the age of 2...

...about the age that antivaxers claim that vaccines give children autism...

Nazi Germany was not ashamed to use the word 'imbeciles' to describe those they sterilized.

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They were also called absent-minded professors, and many had names such as Isaac Newton, Wolfgang Mozart, Thomas Edison, or pick just about any of names on the list of women who refused to buckle under to peer pressure to pursue careers in mathematics (http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/chronol.htm)

I always considered myself a feral child raised by domestic dogs

I will find this one, thanks!
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