retrodiagnose

English

Etymology

retro- +‎ diagnose

Verb

retrodiagnose (third-person singular simple present retrodiagnoses, present participle retrodiagnosing, simple past and past participle retrodiagnosed)

1. To retroactively diagnose a dead person with a medical or psychological condition.
   • 2007, Richard C. Keller, Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa, The University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 85:

     Rather than retrodiagnosing colonial patients through glimpses and gaps in their stories—was this one a paranoid schizophrenic? did that one suffer major depressive psychosis? was a third borderline?— […]

   • 2012, Sam Kean, The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code‎^[1], Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:

     It's still really important in medicine, of course, but now you can do anthropology with genetics, or retrodiagnose famous historical figures, or even do genetics-based origami and computing.

   • 2015, Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity‎^[2], Avery, →ISBN:

     At the outset of his article on Cavendish, however, Sacks stated firmly that he was not just jumping on the bandwagon of retrodiagnosing famous geeks from history with a trendy disorder.