The earliest well-documented case of autism is that of Hugh Blair of Borgue, as detailed in a 1747 court case in which his brother successfully petitioned to annul Blairs marriage to gain Blairs inheritance.The Wild Boy of Aveyron, a feral child found in 1798, showed several signs of autism. He was non-verbal during his teenage years, and his case was widely popular among society for its time. Such cases brought awareness to autism, and more research was conducted on the natural dimensions of human behavior. The medical student Jean Itard treated him with a behavioral program designed to help him form social attachments and to induce speech via imitation.The New Latin word autismus (English translation autism) was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1910 as he was defining symptoms of schizophrenia. He derived it from the Greek word: αὐτός, romanized: autós, lit. self and used it to mean morbid self-admiration, referring to "autistic withdrawal of the patient to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes an intolerable disturbance". A Soviet child psychiatrist, Grunya Sukhareva, described a similar syndrome in Russian in 1925, and in German in 1926. Clinical development and diagnoses
Autism as it is known today can be drawn back to the late 1930s, when two separate psychiatrists -  Hans Asperger of the Vienna University Hospital and Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins Hospital - used the word autism to describe the patients they were studying in their own clinical research.
Although ABA therapy has a strong evidence base, particularly in regard to early intensive home-based therapy, ABAs effectiveness may be limited by diagnostic severity and IQ of the person affected by ASD. The Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology has deemed two early childhood interventions as "well-established": individual comprehensive ABA, and focused teacher-implemented ABA combined with DSP.Another evidence-based intervention that has demonstrated efficacy is a parent training model, which teaches parents how to implement various ABA and DSP techniques themselves. Various DSP programs have been developed to explicitly deliver intervention systems through at-home parent implementation. In October 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) proposed new evidence-based recommendations for early interventions in ASD for children under 3. These recommendations emphasize early involvement with both developmental and behavioral methods, support by and for parents and caregivers, and a focus on both the core and associated symptoms of ASD. However, a Cochrane review found no evidence that early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) is effective in reducing behavioral problems associated with autism in most autistic children but did help improve IQ and language skills. The Cochrane review did acknowledge that this may be due to the low quality of studies currently available on EIBI and therefore providers should recommend EIBI based on their clinical judgement and the familys preferences. No adverse effects of EIBI treatment were found. Studies on pet therapy have shown positive effects.Generally speaking, treatment of ASD focuses on behavioral and educational interventions to target its two core symptoms: social communication deficits and restricted, repetitive behaviors.