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1908: The word autism is first used to describe a subset of schizophrenic patients who were especially withdrawn.
The term Autism comes from the Greek word "autos," meaning "self."
http://projectautism.org/history-of-autism -
1943: American child psychiatrist Leo Kanner, M.D., publishes a paper describing 11 children who were highly intelligent but displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He later names their condition "early infantile autism."
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1944: A German scientist named Hans Asperger described a "milder" form of autism. He named the condition Asperger's Syndrome. He reported that individuals with Asperger's were highly intelligent but had trouble with social interactions. The individuals often had specific obsessive interests as well.
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1950s - Doctors, parents, and psychologists were desperate to determine what was causing autism. Psychologists directly related a mother's "coldness" towards their child with the cause of autism. "Cold mothers" were referred to as, "refrigerator mothers". (This theory was later disproven.)
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1980: "Infantile autism" is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for the first time. The condition was also officially separated from childhood schizophrenia. The addition of "Infantile autism" made it possible for doctors to accurately diagnose autism. It also made is possible to easily differentiate autism from schizophrenia.
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1987: The DSM replaces "infantile autism" with "autism disorder". It included a checklist of the diagnostic criteria as well as a more extensive definition of the term.
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1988: The movie Rain Man is released. The movie raised the public's awareness of autism.
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1990 - The Americans with Disabilities Act is passed. This act made it illegal to discriminate against any individual with a disability.
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1991: Public schools begin identifying and serving children with autism.
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1994: Asperger's syndrome is a milder form of autism and is on the low end of the autism spectrum. Individuals diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome tend to be more highly functioning than individuals on the higher end of the spectrum.
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1997: Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon published a study in which he suggested that measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine was increasing autism in British children. The article was published in a medical journal, The Lancet.
Parents of children diagnosed with autism were desperate to discover the cause of their children's disorder so that they could begin a treatment plan. -
2000: Vaccine manufacturers remove thimerosal (a mercury-based preservative) from all childhood vaccines. This was done due to the public's misguided fears about the preservative's role in the cause of autism.
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2004: Brian Deer reported undisclosed conflicts of interest in the article published by Wakefield. Wakefield had applied for a patent on his own measles vaccine and had received money from a lawyer trying to sue companies making the MMR vaccine. The Lancet retracted the paper in 2010. Shortly after, the United Kingdom's General Medical Council permanently pulled Wakefield's medical license.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/four-vaccine-myths-and-where-they-came -
2013: The DSM-5 folds all subcategories of the condition into one umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Asperger's Syndrome is no longer considered a separate condition.
