After a brief introduction detailing how Silberman became involved with journalistic accounts of autistic people and the scientific studies pertaining to them, the book opens with a biographical account of Henry Cavendish, a late 1700’s English scientist (or natural philosopher as he would be referred to in his time period.) Silberman’s account of Cavendish suggesting he had high functioning autism, and presenting him as someone who was quite a success story, at least if judged on his own standards, especially considering that he was born almost two centuries before anyone had even begun thinking about the diagnosis that would have applied to him. NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman is, to put it in the simplest terms, the definitive history of scientific and popular knowledge of Autism in the western world.
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