WEBVTT - Kanner Syndrome 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:03.120 Hey, Karen, you remember when you were talking to that 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.880 librarian up in Canada. Yeah. Sure, we were trying to 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.440 check out whether this sort of amazing story we had 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:13.560 heard had really truly happened what like eighty years ago, 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:15.640 so that we could put it in our book if 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.680 it did turn out to be true. Oh yes, the 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.920 incident on the train tracks and Halifax. In this librarian 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:25.960 was really helpful. She led me to a story published 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:29.720 in seven in the Halifax Herald. Yeah, look at this 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:34.000 front page. All of these headlines from seven about how 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:38.000 the world was really starting to come apart, British soldiers 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.840 being Sheldon Shanghai, Italy walking out of a peace conference, 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.440 and a new law passed in Germany making it illegal 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.280 for Jews to go into business with non Jews, all 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.280 of this foreshadowing of World War two coming. And then 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.720 right here on the same front page this little headline 0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:01.560 doctor Mrs Death. Well, you know, the story of autism 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:04.480 could have turned out very differently if what happened in 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:12.880 Halifax had a different ending too. September A brisk afternoon 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:16.120 by the harbor in Halifax, Nova Scotia. So close to 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:18.360 the water you can almost taste the salt in the air. 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.560 Dr leo'connor, who likes to walk, sets off on a 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:27.080 stroll along the train tracks that trace the shoreline. Connor 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:29.760 is forty three years old and about a year away 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.760 from starting the research on autism that today defines his 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.440 career for most of us. But at this point he's 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:39.600 already well known as the world's leading authority on child psychiatry. 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.520 His book on the topic is the standard text. He 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:45.920 heads the clinical Department of Child Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.080 the first of its kind in the world. He's up 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.680 in Canada for a conference. During a break, he takes 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.040 a ferry across Halifax Harbor to have lunch at the 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:59.920 home of an old friend. Afterwards, Connor decides to walk 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:04.400 back to the ferry landing. It's a gorgeous walk along 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:08.000 a set of railroad tracks. But at a certain point 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:10.600 these tracks cut out across a stretch of water, a 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.440 little inlet called Dartmouth Cove. So now the tracks are 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:15.760 running on top of this rickety wooden bridge. It's a 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:18.639 train trestle about twenty ft above the water, and it's 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.880 really narrow, just wide enough for a single set of 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.720 railroad tracks. So there's really no shoulder there and there 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.679 are no guardrails, but getting across it looks like it 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.200 should take a minute or two. It most so. Connor 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.720 continues on steps onto the trestle and starts stepping carefully 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:36.560 from railroad tie to railroad tie. He's out near the 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.440 middle of the bridge when he sees the train coming 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.720 at him. The train is moving fast. He's already too 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:48.320 late to run back. His only option jump, but he 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.240 doesn't jump. Instead, he attempts this sort of weird maneuver 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:54.320 where he steps out as far as he can on 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:56.000 one of the railroad ties, and he tries to make 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.480 himself as small as he can. I guess in the 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:00.320 hope that there would be enough rule him for this 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:04.640 oncoming locomotive to just squeezed by without hitting him. It 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.639 doesn't work. The train hits him. It just clips him. 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:13.160 Connor falls, his overcoat flapping up around him, his arms flailing, 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:19.680 and then he hits the water. He's terrified, and not 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:22.359 just because he's just been hit by a train. It's 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:24.720 for the same reason that he chose not to jump. 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:30.640 He can't swim. It is definitely not looking good for 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:37.400 the doctor from Baltimore. Question, what do I feel about 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:41.280 retirement of Well, for one thing, I so far, I 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:45.920 haven't retired. Here's Connor years later in an interview. The 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.120 quality is kind of rough here and there, so we 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.600 brought in a voice actor to recreate Connor's words verbatim. 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.520 What do I feel about retirement and dead? Well, for 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:01.080 one thing, so I haven't retired. Second, as to debt, 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.400 that is something that comes to everybody. I was near 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.360 death when I had my accident in Nova Scotia, and 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:11.560 since then it has given me a great deal of 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:16.440 satisfaction to know that at that time I wasn't panicking. 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:19.760 The only thought I had then was a good thing. 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:25.320 My insurance policies are all paid up. Dead comes to everybody, 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:29.880 it will come to me. So just when it looks 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:34.200 like he's going to drown, Connor gets really lucky. A 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.120 member of the train crew named Murray Hanes, according to 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.600 the newspaper story, sees the doctor hit the water and 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.520 Haynes dives into the cold waters. He gets to Connor 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.400 and pulls him to shore. A passerby runs for help 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:52.080 from a doctor who lives nearby. Connor is badly shaken 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.320 up and he has a broken hip, but he's alive, 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.760 and Connie recovered pretty quickly. He was out of his 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:01.880 plaster cast within him better of months, and never even 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.640 had a limp after everything that happened. He does complain, however, 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:09.000 that the accident left him unable to dance, which of 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.880 course was a joke, because Connor could never dance to 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.920 begin with. Connor may have made light of what happened, 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:17.479 but when John and I were researching the origins of 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.799 the autism diagnosis, we always wondered what would the world 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.800 be like if that guy hadn't jumped in to save him. 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:29.159 How would we be thinking about kids with autism? Would 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.480 we still be locking kids away for life, euthanizing them, 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:38.640 sterilizing them. Would autism as we understand it today even 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:42.440 have been recognized by now? Your question is an extremely 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:47.600 important one, probably an unanswerable one. That's Dr Leon Eisenberg. 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.440 He worked under Connor as a young doctor, and then 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.600 he went on to become a huge figure himself in 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:56.320 child psychiatry. It's a question that's raised in physics so 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:00.320 all the time, and you get these wonderful stories about 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:03.160 the guy who goes to sleep and see the six 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:06.680 carbon atoms holding their hands, and when he wakes up 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.960 in the morning says, that's it, that's it, that's it. Well, 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:14.960 what capacity to take an abstract problem and to make 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:19.839 it visual to see the the atoms holding onto each other, 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:23.960 and then RAMI faded back towards is a question I 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:27.480 think we have a really successfully answered. So your question 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:37.800 is important. It's probably unanswerable. From my Heart radio, this 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:43.719 is autism's first child. I'm Karen Zucker and I'm John Dunvin. 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:47.200 In our last episode, we met Beamon and Mary Triplet 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:52.000 of Forest, Mississippi their determination to unlock the meaning of 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:56.360 their little boy, Donald's unexpected behavior. We'll change history in 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:00.480 this episode, Donald meets the father of child, said Kietry. 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:14.640 Episode two Connor Syndrome, a young couple from a town 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.480 called Forest, Mississippi, Beamon and Mary Triplet brought their three 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.080 year old boy, who was acting and speaking in ways 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:24.080 they didn't understand, to an institution about an hour and 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:28.320 a half from their home to live there without them. 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.960 They arrived at the institution, checked him in, and then 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:34.720 they drove home. There's no way for us to know 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:38.560 how painful this was for Mary and Beaman, but they 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.000 were doing what parents in that error were told to 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:45.000 do by almost the entire medical establishment whenever a child 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:50.400 in the family presented as mentally defective. Those two words 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.800 just sounds so horrible, but in that era, that's how 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:58.520 doctors talked about kids like Donald who were different. The 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.720 idea was to remove those kids from their families, like 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.440 they were not fully human and even posed a danger 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.600 to society. And then the families were told to move 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:11.920 on with their lives, as though these kids didn't even exist. 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:14.960 To get on with their lives, that was the phrase 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.520 they used. Have more kids, that kind of thing. Mary 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.800 and Beaman did that. They had another son, Oliver, with 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.440 Donald away, so they were kind of playing by the roles. 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:28.080 But there was a part of them that we sing 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:31.200 didn't feel right about that. And here's what we know 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:35.680 happened next. They wanted basically to get another opinion about Donald, 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:39.079 and they wanted to get it not just from another doctor, 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.960 but from the top child psychiatrist in the country, if 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.480 not the world, who was none other than the man 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.160 who nearly perished in that train accident less than a 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:54.720 year earlier. Dr leo'connor. Now Connor is a fascinating and 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:59.000 singular character. Here's Dr Leon Eisenberg again reflecting on his 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:05.000 mentors personnel pity. He who was an unusual child, who 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:11.800 is an unusual capacity for memory aver seeing patterns where 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.920 they were not fel Evidently, he was born in Austria 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:19.520 and he went to med school in Berlin. Well, I 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.120 might say briefly in the internroduction that I had originally 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:27.719 had my medical training in Berlin medical school. That's from 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.520 an interview with Dr Connor in two. It's one of 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:35.079 three long interviews recently discovered by the archivist at the 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:39.200 American Psychiatric Association, and these tapes have probably only ever 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.240 been heard by a handful of scholars. I had some 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:46.240 excellent teachers that included a classical student of organic psychosis 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.880 and would later be punished after going against Tyler and 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:54.439 his son was killed by Nazis. I specialized first in 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.560 internal medicine. I came in on the ground for of 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:02.120 electric cardiography and published my thesis on electric cardiographic work 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.280 and also my first paper. Connor was thirty years old 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.280 and had a growing medical practice in Berlin when he 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.480 moved to Yankton, South Dakota on a whim. An American 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:15.839 physician he had grown close to helped Connor land a 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.200 position at the South Dakota State Hospital for the Insane. 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:24.840 Connor was fluent in seven languages when he arrived in Yankton. Unfortunately, 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.440 English wasn't one of them. He worked at changing that, 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:31.240 just as he worked hard at becoming culturally American, buying 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:35.000 a Chevy, taking up golf, joining a weekly poker game. 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:39.040 Back then, the field of psychiatry was still new and 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:43.240 not really professionalized like it is today. Basically there was 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:47.080 Freud and a lot of Germans and Austrians theorizing about neuroses, 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:50.320 and then there were just regular doctors working in mental 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:54.840 hospitals figuring out how to help patients just using their instincts. 0:10:55.280 --> 0:11:00.199 They were basically self taught, and that's how Connor learned psychiatry. Also, 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.600 working in Yankton, he developed his own values and philosophies 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.320 about how mental patients should be treated them. One of 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:09.240 them was he thought we should avoid pigeonholing people and 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.240 getting to know them as individuals, as people with their 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.600 own stories that needed to be listened to, and doing 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:18.200 that became one of the hallmarks of his life's work. 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.160 Here's the late doctor James Harris, another of Connor's protegees 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.520 from Hopkins, in an interview with the BBC, he was 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:32.760 a wise man, a scholar, a compassionate clinician. Although he 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.840 was retired, he would drop by the clinic and encourage 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.400 staff members in their work. But I think most importantly 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:43.400 was his rapport with children. Children talked to him, he listened. 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:49.160 His timing was exceptional. He was particularly concerned the children 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:53.680 be treated as individuals. They tell the stories if you 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:57.440 let them, if you don't use the aha reaction, you 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:00.000 know what they mean by that. Some people look at 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.559 drawing and say, Aha, this means this, and this means 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:07.760 that to home to the interpreter. But if you're going 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:09.880 to give a chance to talk about it, you'd get 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:15.040 their story and not your biases and preoccupations. Connor got 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:19.120 restless and yanked in and he left to work on 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.600 a three year fellowship at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. When 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:25.960 the fellowship was finished, Hopkins gave Connor the job of 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.800 setting up the first psychiatric department within a pediatric hospital 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:33.400 in the United States. In short order, he became the 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.480 field's most prominent figure. But at the start, the hospital 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:40.400 provided Connor with just a small room that had a 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:44.480 washstand and a desk. The little acorn from which the 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:48.160 oak of the Children's Psychiatric Service at Yarns Hopkins Hospital 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.120 grew was not much to look at. I was installed 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.880 in an abandoned annex and the Harrott Lynn Home, which 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:57.960 was once used as an isolation ward for children with 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.959 infectious diseases. The room assigned to me had a shaky 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.200 white table, there was no waiting room, and there was 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:08.440 nobody to look after the children when I interviewed the parents. 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.840 Occasionally an adventurous rodent found its way up from the 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.360 cellar and enabled at the sandwich which I had brought 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:19.440 for lunch. But it grew from there as Connor became 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.240 a major figure in the United States and eventually around 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:26.840 the world, whose textbook called Child Psychiatry became the standard 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.880 in the field, and Hopkins itself became the training ground 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.160 for dozens of young doctors who would go on to 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:36.400 forever change our understanding of pediatric psychiatry. And it's where 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:40.600 one day in the summer of Connor received a letter 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.480 from the father of Donald Triplet. Now John and I 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.760 knew something about the backstory of this letter. We know 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:50.520 that back in forest, Beaman triplet dictated to his secretary 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:54.280 while she filled her notepad with shorthand then she typed 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:57.719 it all up. Beamon wasn't just a successful lawyer. He 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:00.760 was a man with first rate observational skill, and he 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:05.280 was determined to compose a really full, complete, comprehensive biography 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.120 of this four year old child that he and his 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.920 wife had sent away. And this letter he wrote would 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:14.880 turn out to be a game changer. In time. His 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.840 words would travel far and wide around the world. They 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:20.840 would be quoted in scholarly research, They would be discussed 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.720 in university classrooms. They would be translated into many many languages. 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:28.000 But on that human day and forest, it was just 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:32.280 one father speaking from his heart about his boy. You 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:35.320 seem to be self satisfied. He is never glad to 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:39.240 say father or mother. He has no apparent affection when petted, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.960 it does not observe the fact that anyone combs or goes. It. 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:46.040 Never seemed glad to say father or mother or any playmate. 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.000 He seems to draw into his shell and live within himself. 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.440 He seldom comes to anyone when called, but actually picked 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:55.920 up and carried or led wherever he ought to go. 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:01.600 Beamon described Donald's eating habits, his verbal patterns, the age 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.640 of which he learned to walk and count and hum 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:08.760 and sane. And here's the thing, Little Donald showed glimmers 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:11.640 of real brilliance for a young child, and has just 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.520 tantalized his parents to see how he dialed in on 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:18.160 activities that captivated him in such an intense way at 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:20.480 the age of two, that will memorize the words of 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:23.200 many songs and the melodies that went with them, the 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.800 names of all of the presidents of the United States. 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.280 But here's the other thing. According to his father, Donald 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.440 could do little with these facts beyond reciting them rotely. 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.560 He said that conversation with his son was impossible because 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:38.680 Donald seemed to have no interest in people, and he 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.600 wasn't learning to ask or answer questions. In fact, he said, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.280 his son seemed unreachable by any of the usual ways 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.840 that parents connect with their kids. He appears to always 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:54.000 be thinking and thinking, and to get his attention almost 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.280 requires wanted to break down a mental barrier between his 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:03.560 inner consciousness in the outside world. Beaman's letter went on 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:07.040 and on like this. By the time as secretary finished 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:11.080 typing the letter, it ran to thirty three single space pages, 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:14.200 and it's historic because it would be the basis of 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.520 a landmark account of a child with autism, a term 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:23.560 and diagnosis that did not yet exist. When we return 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.800 Beaman and Mary Triplets stage a rescue for their little boy. 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:34.920 So Beaman sent the letter off to Baltimore, and Connor 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:37.680 received it and he read it, and he wanted to 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:41.240 see Donald. A date was set, and in those days 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.720 far As, Mississippi was a long way away from Baltimore, Maryland, 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.400 but that's where Donald was heading now for an in 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:50.800 person meeting with Dr Connor during the first week of October. 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:57.480 Beamon triplets letter describing Donald is a hugely important document 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:03.440 because it's just so influential. But sadly for us, for everyone, 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.000 most of what he wrote has been lost. We have 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:11.440 excerpts quotations from it that Connor published, but the original 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:16.000 it's gone and there don't seem to be any copies, 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.160 so we've never been able to read the full text, 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:22.399 not that we didn't try. In fact, we searched for 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.360 that letter a long long time. We pastor Johns Hopkins 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.240 to look through their archives and they never turned it up, 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:31.400 although we did find some of Donald's initial medical records. There, 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:34.320 we went through every page of the Connor archive at 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.760 the American Psychiatric Association. Then we went down to Forest 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.080 and visited Beamon's old law office, where there was a 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:44.600 room stuffed with old, rusting metal file cabinets stuffed with papers, 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:47.280 but nothing there of that letter. We went to an 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.200 old bank vault in Forest that his family used to 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:52.880 store the overflow from Beamon's law practice and went through 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:56.199 all of those filing cabinets. Nothing there. Then Donald let 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.119 us go through all of the cupboards and closets and 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:01.600 drawers and a x in the house where he grew up. 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.960 His family had saved everything. In fact up in the attic. 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.480 We found love letters between Mary and Beeman in the 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:11.560 early nineteen twenties, perfectly preserved after a century. But we 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:15.000 just didn't find what we were looking for, that famous letter. 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:21.280 So writing that letter was just one step Donald's parents stuff. 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.399 The next one was even more important in Donald's life. 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.760 They had sent him away because they were told it 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:32.560 was the right thing to do. Now they decided it 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.960 wasn't the right thing at all. Here's Donald's nephew, Oh B. Triplett. 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:39.360 I think one day. So she said, you know what, 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.439 I'm not doing this. I am not doing this. It 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:44.719 doesn't you know, doesn't pay all right or whatever. And 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:46.920 then you know, we're going to turn the page and 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:49.359 started to know the chapter in the life of Don. 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:52.720 So they drove back down to that institution and they 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.760 told the director they were taking Donald out and taking 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:59.280 him back home. And here's the amazing thing. They got 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.320 pushed back. Okay, the director insisted, and this is a quote. 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:06.879 Donald is getting along nicely now, and he said they 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.119 should leave him alone, which meant leave him there. But 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:13.280 Mary's mind was made up. She dressed Donald and clothes 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:15.720 she had brought him from home, and then the three 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:18.680 of them got in the car and they drove home 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:25.360 together and now to Baltimore. Donald had just turned five 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:27.760 a few days earlier when he and his parents boarded 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:31.280 the train in Meridian, Mississippi. The train journey took two 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:35.199 days across seven states, and for Donald, we imagine this 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:39.000 trip must have been one of those bewildering, maybe mesmerizing 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:43.480 explosions of new sensory experiences. I mean, don't we all 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:45.840 have that experience in a train at night, staring out 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:53.800 the windows, watching the lights, sling through the blackness outside. 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:57.560 Their journey ended in Baltimore at the Harriet Lane Home 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:01.720 for Invalid Children. After a physical exam, Donald was led 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.520 into a hospital library and presented to a group of 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:09.040 roughly thirty physicians. Donald blocked eyes on some alphabet blocks 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.120 in one of the doctor's hands. He grabbed them and 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:17.760 started spinning them, seemingly completely oblivious to anything else going on. 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:20.399 And a little later he walked up to one of 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.399 the older doctors and reached up to stroke his beard. 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.119 Our research on Donald's story brought us to the library 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:30.920 at the American Psychiatric Association in Arlington, Virginia. He spent 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.440 a lot of time there and found, amongst many other things, 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:38.720 that Leo Connor had written an unpublished autobiography. More recently, 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:41.359 a series of audio recordings of long interviews Connor sat 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:44.200 for in the late nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies was discovered, 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:46.639 and Karen, you made a really interesting find in the 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.920 Hopkins archives, the intake notes on Donald for when he 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:52.520 first got to Hopkins. Yeah, they were only a few 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.560 pages long, but no journalists had ever seen them before. 0:20:56.840 --> 0:21:00.560 In October nine hundred and thirty eight, a five year 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:04.159 old boy was brought to me from Forest, Mississippi. I 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:08.800 was struck by the uniqueness of the peculiarities which Donald exhibited. 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:12.240 He could, since the age of two and a half years, 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:16.640 tell the names of all presidents and vice presidents, recite 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:21.040 the letters of the alphabet forwards and backwards, and flawlessly, 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:25.200 with good enunciation, rattle off the twenty third song. Yet 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:29.680 he was unable to carry on an ordinary conversation. He 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:32.240 was out of contact with people. What he could handle 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:37.440 objects skillfully, His memory was phenomenal. The few times when 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:41.720 he addressed someone, largely to satisfy his wants, he referred 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.680 to himself as you and to the person a desk 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:48.720 as I. He didn't respond to any form of intelligence testing, 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:55.480 but manipulated intricate form boards jointly. Donald remained in Baltimore 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:59.199 for two weeks observation and study at the Child Study Center, 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:04.520 on whose the directors I was a member, and of 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:06.560 course Connor and his colleagues remarked on all of the 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.560 ways that Donald appeared to isolate himself. Connor observed that 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:13.560 Donald showed disappointment when he didn't get his way, and 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:17.320 it seemed that he did like getting praise. That's all 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.400 stuff a typical child would do. But Connor also noted 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.320 Donald doing some really unusual things. For example, he would 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:26.720 walk around drawing letters in the air with his fingers 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:31.280 and speaking out random words like semicolon and capital and 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:35.000 twelve twelve. He chewed on paper, he put food in 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:38.200 his hair, he threw books into the toilet, he put 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:41.480 a key down the water drain, he threw temper tantrums, 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.560 he climbed all over the furniture. So Donald spent two 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:47.840 weeks being observed in Baltimore, and after that the family 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:50.600 went back home to Mississippi, and from that point on, 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:54.520 Mary started sending almost monthly letters to Connor describing how 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:56.320 he was doing at home, and some of what she 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:59.280 wrote showed some real development going on. He learned to 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:02.520 read fluently and to play simple tunes on the piano. 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:05.760 He began responding to yes or no questions. He started 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:09.160 building things with his blocks, watering flowers with his hose, 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:14.000 playing store with the household groceries. Yet it was clear 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:18.399 that Donald still had some serious challenges, and he made 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:21.240 several more visits to Baltimore over the next few years, 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:24.560 kind of becoming one of Connor's favorite patients. The truth 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:27.520 is Donald fascinated le O'Connor and made him want to 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:31.520 figure out exactly how this boy was different and why, 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:35.399 and Donald's parents wanted to know the same thing. We 0:23:35.480 --> 0:23:38.680 found some correspondence between Connor and Mary where she admitted 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:42.879 to being worried that she had quote a hopelessly insane child. 0:23:43.640 --> 0:23:46.600 Connor took these feelings seriously, and he wanted her to 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:49.760 be more optimistic. In his next letter, he urged her 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:54.320 to quote refrain from that type of gloom. Many times 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:57.080 he wrote to reassure her that our efforts to help 0:23:57.119 --> 0:24:02.520 Donald were splendid and often heroic. Donald, he insisted, was 0:24:02.640 --> 0:24:06.520 fortunate in having you for a mother. Important things were 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:09.520 happening in Donald's life during these years. In the fall 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:12.639 of nineteen thirty nine, he began the first grade. Mary 0:24:12.720 --> 0:24:17.280 wrote Connor about that also October nineteen thirty nine. The 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:21.080 first day was very trying for him, but each succeeding 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:25.760 day he's improved very much. Dawn is much more independent. 0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:29.280 He wants to do many things for herself. He marches 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:33.000 in line nicely, answers when called upon, and is more 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:37.760 bidable and obedient. In March of nineteen forty, in the 0:24:37.760 --> 0:24:40.800 middle of the first grade year, Mary noted to Connor, 0:24:41.200 --> 0:24:44.560 the greatest improvement I noticed is in his awareness of 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:48.119 things about him. He talks very much more and asked 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:52.000