What was autism called in ancient times?

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9CatMom
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18 Jan 2007, 10:21 am

Where did this list come from? Virtually none of it applies to me. I was typically one of the last ones finished with a test, but that was because I bothered to check over my work before handing it in. I got grades in the 90-100 percent range while some of the fast finishers flunked.



logitechdog
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18 Jan 2007, 11:01 am

You can put 1% in viewing content infront of you and matching it from a quote that is above it ;) :twisted:



paulsinnerchild
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18 Jan 2007, 7:12 pm

IMHO the "dumb" label which literally means "one who cannot speak" as there were deaf and dumb asylums established long before before the word "autism" was ever used. Long before I was diagnosed I was assumed I was deaf until I was taken to a hearing specialist and he concluded there was nothing wrong with my hearing at all. If I was born 100 earlier I could have been sent to one of the asylums for the deaf and dumb with a greater emphasis on the dumb.

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Dumb was formerly used to refer to persons unable to speak; it is now used almost entirely of the inability of animals to speak: dumb beasts of the field. The term mute is applied to persons who, usually because of congenital deafness, have never learned to talk: With training most mutes learn to speak well enough to be understood. Either of the foregoing terms or speechless may describe a temporary inability to speak, caused by emotion, etc.: dumb with amazement; mute with terror; left speechless by surprise. Voiceless means literally having no voice, either from natural causes or from injury: Turtles are voiceless. A laryngectomy leaves a person voiceless until he or she has learned esophageal speech.


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squier
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18 Jan 2007, 7:48 pm

well, aspergers wasn't discovered until 1943, and not widely know until 1981, and it wasn't published in any diagnosis books until 1994 in the US.
they probably thought an aspie was just rude in those times. for people with it really bad, they probably thought that the parents were being punished by god, or the kid had part of the devil in them.


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Yupa
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18 Jan 2007, 8:41 pm

TG wrote:
I bet Jesus was an Aspie. He knew a lot of cool s**t and couldn't get a date... :wink:


He was more of an awesome and respectable bullshitter...
Though I do admire the BS in question... it's still a pretty good system to live one's life by.



Yupa
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18 Jan 2007, 8:46 pm

Anyway, it depends on the society... a person with AS or HFA could just have well have been a monk or a scribe as a criminal awaiting a death sentence, and there was probably at least one autistic king or queen at some point in history.
In a lot of cultures what your position was and how you were treated depended more than anything on what your father's profession had been, what his father's profession had been... Anyway, if you had money, you would probably be put into an arranged marriage, which could be OK or could be awful, depending. And money plays into it a lot: The more money you inherited, the more likely people were to not put your odd little habits into question.



Corvus
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18 Jan 2007, 8:48 pm

Well... ancient, ancient times? Well, if you lived in an area where someone first discovered fire, who would you refer to that discoverer as? :wink:

Jesus had potential aspie. I've always wondered if all monks really want to be monks



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18 Jan 2007, 9:53 pm

Image

Mr. Charles William Post

Charles went to the Illinois Industrial University in Urbana, later to become the University of Illinois. He was thirteen years old at the time. He was anxious to make his mark and his fortune and school was a waste of time to him.

After his success in persuading his parents to allow him to leave school, he joined the Illinois Governor’s Guard. His term in the guard awakened in Charles the desire to travel. After he left the guard he met up with and formed a partnership with an old school pal, Charles Moody. They decided to explore the wild West. They headed for Oklahoma Territory and the plains of Kansas. Even in those days the life of being a cowboy held a certain fascination for a young boy. They traveled extensively across the Southwest in search of business prospects and their fortune.


On November 4, 1874, Charles William Post was to marry Ella Merriweather, his childhood sweetheart. They were married at Pawnee, Illinois. She was twenty-one years of age, and he was twenty. The took place in the home of her Uncle. She was a music lover and a dancer. Both were industrious and ambitious, the perfect couple for what lay ahead in their future. The marriage seemed to add fuel to Post’s already tremendous energy, though his bride was rarely seen with him in public. She preferred to remain in the Post family’s rambling Victorian estate.

http://www.posttexas.com/CWPostHHistory.htm

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Probably us their throw the rocks at us, we go off alone banging the rocks on the floor, suddenly a spark, about 1 - 5 mins later we got fire lol ;)
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18 Jan 2007, 10:10 pm

Nobody would really notice AS in a low-density rural culture, so it would get no special name. Low-functioning autistics would be mixed up with severe MR and likely be left in the woods to die rather than be a drain on resources.



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19 Jan 2007, 8:16 am

Makes you want to ask a lot of questions about your grandparents, or great-grandparents. If an ASpie lived in a farm community back at the beginning of the 20th century, they might have just been thought odd, but fit in pretty well. We love animals, so you might have been quite good at raising horses, or hunting dogs. This would have fit right in with community needs. Or for us guys, maybe obssessed with gasoline engines, and early cars. Your great grandfather might have "always been tinkering with his model T". It might have been more difficult for the women, being expected to take care of home and children. They might have been the "old maids" who never married, but still managed to have a home (and lots of cats). Or they might have been the best seamstress in the town, sewing dresses for a living. Or raising the most chickens, or goats...


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paulsinnerchild
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19 Jan 2007, 9:01 am

The Romans may have interbred aspie and autistic slaves for the gladiators to practice on. It they are anything like me they would have terrible fighting skills.



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19 Jan 2007, 10:09 am

Prof_Pretorius wrote:
Makes you want to ask a lot of questions about your grandparents, or great-grandparents. If an ASpie lived in a farm community back at the beginning of the 20th century, they might have just been thought odd, but fit in pretty well. We love animals, so you might have been quite good at raising horses, or hunting dogs. This would have fit right in with community needs. Or for us guys, maybe obssessed with gasoline engines, and early cars. Your great grandfather might have "always been tinkering with his model T". It might have been more difficult for the women, being expected to take care of home and children. They might have been the "old maids" who never married, but still managed to have a home (and lots of cats). Or they might have been the best seamstress in the town, sewing dresses for a living. Or raising the most chickens, or goats...


I agree and also that you could have ended up a monk/nun/scribe, probably particularly if your family were well off.

I don't know if this is already in the thread but just tried this - http://www.fisheaters.com/quiz1.html - and was impressed. Spectrum people are melancholics. Using the four humours from antiquity, without even understanding the structure or chemistry of the brain, mediæval Catholic spiritual writers could be very good psychologists. Based on observations accumulated over many years they understood and knew how to treat spectrum people. That is, the educated minority of people knew. I imagine the uneducated majority thought spectrumites either holy fools or possessed. Again a lot like people today.



Last edited by Young_fogey on 19 Jan 2007, 12:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Prof_Pretorius
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19 Jan 2007, 11:11 am

I imagine ASpies as being very good monks. Day after day, copying a manuscript version of the Bible, or prayer book. Being meticulous in the writing, and calligraphy. Not being very interested in the other monk's gossip ! ! Living in a closed community, having a day to day schedule and rituals. Hmmm, I'm almost wishing for a time machine (! !!)


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19 Jan 2007, 12:03 pm

What about the king's fool? The fool had to be very intelligent and funny or goofy. Often the King would ask the fool what he thought about someone's opinion. He might have the most honest and logical answer to the problem. He would not be interested in impressing anyone or lying and be very very loyal to the king. Sometimes the fool would say the wrong thing and end up losing his head as punishment if he angered the king.



paulsinnerchild
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19 Jan 2007, 9:35 pm

I cannot imagine aspies being conformist monks at all. The very notion of conforming to within a tight social setting would just make me throw a tantrum after tantrum. But I could easily imagine ancient aspies being hermit radical philosophers which may only reach some pinacle of fame long after they are dead, and the rest of the world only begins to fully embrace their concepts to what at first were dismissed as gibberish manuscripts become brilliant ideas which revolutionize the world.



Yupa
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19 Jan 2007, 10:10 pm

paulsinnerchild, I feel that you're overgeneralizing.
Some aspies are too far out of the norm, and others are thought ill of because they lean *too close* toward's society's ideal of what a human being should be: Smart, law-abiding, etc.