The beginning of research on synaesthesia in children: Searching for traces in the 19th and early 20th century (original) (raw)

Given what we know from current research, Georg Tobias Ludwig Sachs was the first documented synaesthete in history. His medical dissertation, principally about albinism but including a self description of his synaesthesia, was published in 1812. At that time, Sachs was 26 years old. Subsequent single case reports of synaesthetes mostly concerned adults. Where are the children? Four sets of open questions will be answered in this article: 1) When did the first documented case of a child with synaesthesia appear? Who discovered it, and when? 2) Who carried out the first empirical study on synaesthesia in children? When was this done and what were the results? 3) Who carried out the first longitudinal study with a child to test whether synaesthesia is consistent over years? When was this and how did they approach the question of whether synaesthesia is congenital or learned? 4) How old were the youngest children with synaesthesia documented in the 19th and early 20th century?