“If we take Marcel’s complaints seriously, then his health was deteriorating, he was growing increasingly tired and it was becoming ever more difficult for him to work. Particular problems badly disrupted his way of life. Occasionally his beloved Quies ear plugs would give him otitis, for which he consulted Wicart, ‘charming but too intelligent’: the doctor’s aim was actually to cure Marcel of his asthma. ‘Ah! How soothing our doctors like the good Bize, who hadn’t examined my chest for ten years’. Sometimes he poisoned himself by mixing a packet of veronal and opium. In October his asthma attacks became so bad that for the first time Dr Bize had to give him morphine injections, the only effect of which would daze him totally. He was convinced that he was soon going to die; ‘a strange woman has chosen to make her home in my brain’, he wrote. (Tadie, Jean-Yves. Marcel Proust. A Life. New York: Viking; 2000:728)

The neural pathological correlates of autism continue to be defined. Abnormalities of the cerebellum have been a consistent pathological finding. Investigators from the University of Chicago have now demonstrated that in patients with high functioning autism saccadic abnormalities can be …