According to Alvares et al (2017), intravenous oxytocin was first synthesised and used to induce labour in childbirth in the 1950s.
The use of oxytocin as an intervention for autistic people was first tried by Professor Eric Hollander and colleagues at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York in 1983.
They drew upon the findings from animal studies pointing to the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in excessive grooming and repetitive behaviors and investigated the influence of oxytocin infusion on repetitive behaviors in autism.