Ancient ADHD History

Ancient ADHD History

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to note every literary reference to behaviours potentially attributable to ADHD, however, certain instances it would be remiss not to mention. The earliest character suffering from a malady of attention appears in a play (King Hennery VIII, circa 1613) by William Shakespeare, perhaps unsurprising given his uncanny ability to understand and portray human nature and mental illness. ADHD type symptoms appear in a number of other academic and medical literature before a German doctor, Heinrich Hoffman, coined the term Hyperkinetic Syndrome, and wrote a children’s story which clearly describes some of these behaviors,

“Fidgety Phil, he won’t sit still, he wriggles, and giggles … The naughty restless child growing still more rude and wild” (Stewart,1970, p. 94).

As Ilina Singh (2008) sensibly asserted, the mere presence of characters demonstrating ADHD like symptoms in antiquated literature does not support the validity of a medical diagnosis.  However, the use of inductive reasoning as a precursor to scientific method is unarguably of merit in, if not central to, empirical pursuits. But such observations do refute arguments from the likes of Conrad (1976) who suggested that modern society created the problem or was medicalizing normal behaviours. If this were true then what were Shakespeare and Hoffman reacting to ... I wonder???