He did math in seconds and was said to have calculated the number of bricks in his high school’s facade with a glance. It was Dr. Leo Kanner who first spoke about autistic disorders
He had repetitive behaviors and became angry if anyone tried to interfere in his rituals. But he was also able to do complicated calculations in seconds and perform to perfection a song heard only once. Donald Triplet, who died at the age of 89 from cancer at his home in Forest, a small town in Mississippi, has already gone down in history because he was the first person in the world to be diagnosed with autism. A high-functioning ailment, in his case, as Triplett he was able to study, find a job, drive a car and even travel around the world.
Childhood
Donald Gray Triplett was born in Forest on September 8, 1933 to Mary McCravey, an English teacher, and Beamon Triplett, a lawyer. Since he was a child he seemed to live in a world apart: he didn’t respond to peers or adults or parents. He used language in a very personal way and assigned numbers to the people he met. He repeated mysterious phrases like I could put a small comma or a semicolon. She had repetitive behaviors, including turning round objects like saucepans. If one of his rituals was interrupted, she would overreact. On the other hand, he had super abilities: he did complicated mathematical calculations in seconds and could sing a song perfectly after hearing it once. He was said to have calculated the number of bricks in his high school’s facade with a glance.
Doctor Kanner
In 1937, Donald’s parents sent Donald to a Mississippi community called Sanatorium (it takes its name from the Mississippi Tuberculosis Sanatorium, founded in 1916): they visited him only twice a month and the child spent his days doing nothing, sometimes not moving. After a year, his parents asked him to take him home and had him examined by a doctor in Baltimore. Leo Kanner. He founded the first child psychiatry clinic in the United States at Johns Hopkins University. He initially didn’t know how to describe the child’s condition. He had studied the concept of autism developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who in the early twentieth century had used it as a term to indicate the self-referential characteristics of some schizophrenic patients. In a 1943 article titled Autistic touch disorderKanner described the cases of 11 children who he said illustrated a condition that differed markedly and uniquely from anything reported in medical books thus far. Having chosen Donald as his first patient—he describes him as Case 1 or Donald T.— Kanner sketched a disorder that included obsessive repetitive habits, excellent routine memory, and inability to relate to other people in an ordinary way. He called this form of autism rare, but added that it was probably more common than indicated by the paucity of observed cases.
Studies, work, travel
That scientific paper, along with the many notes Beamon Triplett made describing his son’s condition to Dr. Kanner, became the basis of what is now called autism spectrum disorders. Over the years Donald Triplett he never stopped having hauntings, talking sluggishly and being unable to hold a conversation. But his life also held many surprises for him. He is a 1958 graduate of Millsaps College in Jackson, Missouri. He learned to drive and worked for 65 years as an accountant in the Bank of Forest, of which his maternal grandfather had been a founder and his father Beamon a major shareholder. With the help of a travel agent, Donald has taken solo holidays to many countries around the world. Donald became famous in 2010, when journalists John Donvan and Caren Zucker wrote an article about his life for The Atlantic. A book was born from the article, In a different key: the story of autismand a documentary of the same title.
The Forest community
According to Donvan and Zucker, Donald’s family wealth was instrumental in helping him secure a decent life. But it was just as decisive the community of Forest (about three thousand inhabitants) who, the two reporters wrote, made a probably unconscious but clear decision on how he was going to treat this strange boy, then a man, who lived among them. They decided, in short, to accept it. Donald had many friends. Some of them saw Triplett every morning for coffee. Neighbors welcomed him to their team for the Forest Country Club golf tournament. His fellow citizens spoke with admiration of his super abilities in music and mathematics.
June 20, 2023 (change June 20, 2023 | 2:40 pm)
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