[2] The process often requires "translating between linguistic and conceptual worlds separated by several centuries",[4] and assumes our modern disease concepts and categories are privileged.
[5] Darin Hayton, a historian of science at Haverford College, claims that retrodiagnosing famous individuals with autism in the media is pointless, as historical accounts often contain incomplete information.
For example, knowledge of the insect vectors of malaria and yellow fever can be used to explain the changes in extent of those diseases caused by drainage or urbanisation in historical times.
[3] The practice of retrospective diagnosis has been applied in parody, where characters from fiction are "diagnosed"; e.g., authors have speculated that Squirrel Nutkin may have had Tourette syndrome[7] and that Tiny Tim could have had distal renal tubular acidosis (type I).
[11] Another example is where analysis of preserved umbilical cord tissue enables the diagnosis of congenital cytomegalovirus infection in a patient who had later developed a central nervous system disorder.