[dlivingston]

Reading your linked article, it's clear that this was viewed as absolute quackery even back then, and is about as conflict-of-interesty as you can get: commissioned by Louisiana at the height of the Civil War, and proposed by a doctor who served in the Confederate Army [1]. His suggested treatment for Drapetomania was "whipping the devil out of them".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_A._Cartwright

[noosphr]

This was proposed a decade before the war started and was reprinted widely in the Southern States. That the North found it ridiculous is a bit like saying that because the Chinese Academy of Sciences says there is no such thing as autism then it's obviously viewed as quackery in the West too.

[8bitchemistry]

Are you able to tell us a bit more about the Chinese Academy of Sciences saying there is no such thing as autism? I was curious but cannot find anything about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_in_China

[esalman]

There's none lol. I may have participated in studies as a researcher partially funded by Chinese academy of sciences because we had Chinese collaboration, and some studies involved autism biomarker research.