In a Different Key: The Story of Autism by John Donvan, Caren Zucker

treated with outright cruelty.
    But not always.
    —
    H UGH B LAIR OF B ORGUE was fussy about wigs—an accoutrement that, as a member of the landed class in 1740s Scotland, he was expected to wear whenever he ventured out in public. He did this, but not without a great deal of bother. He was always taking his wig off, plunging it into water, and trying to wash it. There it would hang, on a tree branch outside the family manse in southwest Scotland, drying in the wind while he waited. And yet, for all that, when Hugh finally did plunk the thing on his head, often as not he put it on backward, and went out in public that way. He was either unaware of the faux pas or indifferent to it.
    Hugh was in his late thirties, a loner who lived with his aged mother in the stone house his grandfather had built, where his attic bedroom was cluttered with the twigs, feathers, and scraps of cloth he picked up off the ground every day. He dressed in bizarre outfits, worn and torn and mended all over with mismatched colored patches he sewedon himself. Once a piece of clothing became his favorite, he would refuse to wear anything else. Some of these were garments he came across abandoned by the road or “found” in the closets of nearby houses. Dropping in on neighbors unexpectedly, wandering through their rooms, whether they were at home or not, he tended to carry off whatever struck his fancy. He also made a habit of attending every funeral held in the community, even when he was not particularly well acquainted with the deceased.
    In the small, connected world of southwest Scotland, the neighbors were aware of his odd behaviors and apparently quite understanding of them. They knew, when he came by, that it was never for a chat. People appeared to hold no interest for him, especially not in comparison with animals. With cats, for example, he was on close terms. When he sat down for supper, they draped themselves about him to share the meal, plunging paws into his spoon even as he lifted it to his mouth. Hugh didn’t push them away. Instead, he pulled their paws to his lips and licked them clean.
    This portrait ofHugh Blair of Borgue was pieced together in the 1990s by the two-person team of Rab Houston, a Scottish social historian, and Uta Frith, a London-based psychologist. It was Houston and Frith’s contention that Hugh Blair of eighteenth-century Scotland was a clear case of what Leo Kanner learned to see only after he’d met Donald in the twentieth century. Frith put it this way:“The available evidence is rich enough and unambiguous enough to demonstrate that Hugh Blair would be given an unequivocal diagnosis of autism today.”
    The best evidence the eighteenth century could offer was a documented legal inquiry into Hugh’s mental competence, presided over by a judge, officially transcribed, and informed by the testimony of twenty-nine witnesses, as well as that of Hugh himself. The proceedings, which lasted over several days in 1747, arose from a family dispute over inheritance. Hugh’s father, a landowner, had died many years earlier, leaving a sizable estate to be divided between his two sons. Hugh’s half remained under his mother’s guardianship; his younger brother, John, controlled the other half. Hugh had no heirs, while John had two sons. This meant that upon Hugh’s death, the entire estate would pass back to John and his progeny. John was counting on that, sincehe had been running up debts and had already been forced to borrow money from his mother.
    Their mother, however, had gone and arranged a marriage for her odd older son. Somehow, she had persuaded a local surgeon to give his daughter’s hand to a man who licked cats’ paws at the dinner table. The exact inducements offered to the young woman were unknown, but likely involved a transfer of money. As for the mother’s motives, she was probably worried about her son’s future. Well into her sixties, she could imagine that soon Hugh might lose his primary