This article originally appeared in the 2000 in Issue 2 of Senehasa Magazine. Dr. Leo Kanner, an American psychiatrist, first described autism as a distinct syndrome in 1943. This life-long disability which affects social interaction and communication, as well as cognitive ability, usually appears when children are between two and five years old and affects approximately five children in every 10,000. It is four times as likely to occur in boys as in girls and it has been found throughout the...