ADHD - An Illustrated historical overview

Savvy observers W hile stories of restive and undisciplined children are as old as humanity it- self, reports of fidgety and restless children in a more closely medical con- text can be traced back at least as far as 1798, when the Scottish-born physician and author Alexander Crichton (1763–1856) described in his book An inquiry into the nature and origin of mental derangement a mental state reminiscent of the inattentive subtype of ADHD. In this work, he observed clinical cases of mental illness and dedicated a chapter “on attention, and its diseases.” "The incapacity of attending with a necessary degree of constancy to any one object, almost always arises from an unnatural or morbid sensibility of the nerves, by which means this faculty is incessantly withdrawn from one impression to another. It may be either born with a person, or it may be the effect of accidental diseases. When born with a person it becomes evident at a very early period of life, and has a very bad effect, inasmuch as it renders him incapable of attending with constancy to any one object of education. But it seldom is in so great a degree as totally to impede all instruction; and what is very fortunate, it is gener- ally diminished with age.” Crichton, 1798, Vol. 1, p. 271f. "At the age of two years, the subject of the present relation, became so mischievous and uncontrollable, that he was sent from home to be nursed by his aunt. In this situation at the request of his parents, and with the concurrence of his relation, he was indulged in every wish, and never corrected for any per- verseness or impropriety of conduct. Thus he continued until he was nearly nine years old, the creature of volition and the terror of the family." Haslam, 1809, p. 199f. A few years later, in 1809, the English physician John Haslam (1764–1844) pro- vided the case history of a ten-year-old boy who was “the creature of voli- tion and the terror of the family”, or, in brief, a destructive lad with uncontrollable impulsivity.