Donald Triplett

Donald Triplett (born September 8, 1933, Forest, Mississippi, U.S.—died June 15, 2023, Forest, Mississippi) was an American male who was the first person diagnosed with autism.

Triplett was the eldest son of an affluent family; his mother’s family had founded the local bank in Forest, Mississippi, and his father was an attorney. It became apparent at an early age that social interaction was challenging and ultimately uninteresting to him; he fixated on certain kinds of objects and displayed a knack for memorization. His parents, unable to cope with some of his developmental delays, committed him to a state institution in 1937. They withdrew him a year later.

In October 1938 Triplett was examined by Austrian child psychiatrist Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Kanner was baffled by the boy’s symptoms and, though he noted some similarities to schizophrenia, was unable to diagnose him. Kanner saw Triplett several more times and by 1943 had encountered 10 cases of similarly affected children. That year he published an article titled “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact” that outlined the basic symptoms of the disorder later known as autism. The term autism was derived from the clinical description of the withdrawal and internalization demonstrated by schizophrenia patients. In the paper, Triplett was referred to as Case 1, Donald T.

At Kanner’s urging, in 1944 Triplett went to live with a couple who owned a farm near Forest. There his proclivities for counting and measuring were put to practical use on a daily basis as he helped with chores such as plowing. He returned to live with his parents four years later. In 1947 he sustained an episode of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, from which he nearly died. Treatment with gold salts restored his health and, according to his younger brother, also seemed to alleviate some of his autistic behaviour, including his nervousness and unsociability. This later led some to cite his case in support of the controversial theory that autism was caused by external factors, as mercury poisoning was also treated with gold salts and was thought to be a possible cause of autism.

Triplett attended the local high school, where his disabilities were largely accepted, and in 1958 he received a bachelor’s degree in French from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. He later returned to his hometown, where he worked at the bank owned by his family. Though retaining many features of the disorder throughout his life, Triplett was able to learn to drive and traveled abroad extensively.