Autistic People Are the Salt of the Earth: Hans Asperger's Final Text on Autism Before His Death

This article presents a previously untranslated late work by Hans Asperger describing autistic children as sensitive, intelligent, creative, and rational individuals. The paper examines whether Asperger's original characterizations of autism align with modern spectrum disorder definitions or exist outside pathological frameworks, considering the diagnostic evolution from Asperger syndrome's emergence post-mortem through its addition to DSM-IV and removal in DSM-V.