This is an interesting history of autism I found on the AARP website of all places...
In 1943, the American physician Leo Kanner published his seminal paper,
in which he described 11 children who were socially isolated, with "autistic disturbances of affective contact," impaired communication, and behavioral inflexibility. He coined the term "
infantile autism"
and discussed the causes in terms of biological processes, although at
that time, most scientific attention was focused on analytical theories
of the disorder. Kanner's paper did not initially receive much
scientific credit, and children with autistic symptoms continued to be
incorrectly diagnosed with childhood
schizophrenia. His choice of the term "autism" may have created some confusion,
because the word was first used to describe a mental state of
fantastical, self-centered thought processes, similar to the symptoms of
schizophrenia.