Medicine: The Child Is Father

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He becomes withdrawn into himself. For this condition Dr. Kanner coined the term "infantile autism." It corresponds roughly to the old, and now outmoded, concept of childhood schizophrenia.

For it, there is as yet no uniformly effective treatment. When one is worked out, Dr. Kanner is more likely than any other living man to be its originator.

Father of two (each of whom has made him a grandfather), he belies his retired status as a Hopkins professor emeritus, keeps busy teaching, seeing children with difficulties, and writing. Unable to resist a little joke, Dr. Kanner says of his ophthalmologist son: "We're both in the 'I' business, only he spells it eye and I spell it ego."