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shyscyberchamber.com
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FREAKS
:
Helen Keller |
Date
Added
SEP 2003 |
It is often said that if one human
faculty is impaired, the body compensates by sharpening the rest of
the senses. In the 19th Century, after she was struck deaf, dumb
and blind, a girl called Helen Keller became the world's most baffling
medical oddity, because she could distinguish colours simply by
touching them and people simply by sniffing them.
She was examined by doctors and public audiences, who marveled not
only at her incredibly developed freak senses but also her remarkable
courage. She became famous across America as ;the girl with
eyeless sight', and, in a tremendous victory over her own infirmities,
managed to succeed in gaining several university degrees.
Helen Keller had been a perfectly normal, happy little girl at her
family home in Alabama until tragedy stuck when she was 19 months old.
She contacted a virulent fever which gave her delirium, convulsions
and a raging temperature which doctors were convinced would kill her.
After three days, however, it became apparent that she would survive
against the odds - although joy quickly turned to heartbreak again
when her parents were told that the ravages of the fever would leave
their 'bright-as-a-button' little girl permanently deaf, dumb and
blind.
Until she reached the age of 8, Helen's mother and father nursed and
cared for her as best they could - though it soon became obvious that
they were unable to educate or even discipline her; she had developed
into a physically strong girl given, occasionally, to violent temper
tantrums. Their situation was desperate; their sense of love and
loyalty made them reluctant to send Helen to a home where she would
have been cared for but, more than likely, would never have
progressed.
It was at that stage that a Miss Sullivan from the Perkins Institute
for the Blind in South Boston became interested in Helen, and
determined to try to teach her to manage simple day-to-day tasks and
how to behave. It soon became apparent to Miss Sullivan that
Helen had a bright and agile mind and, with the help of another
teacher, Sarah Fuller, Helen began to absorb a little and then a lot
of information about the world in which she had previously been a
total stranger.
Miss Fuller, an expert in speech therapy for the deaf, began by
teaching Helen the manual alphabet - spelling out letters and words on
the palm of her hand. Slowly, the silent and incomprehensible
darkness which had enveloped the tragic little girl began to fade
away. Helen began to learn more and more quickly, until she was
able, using the hand signals she had mastered, to tell Miss Fuller
what she wanted to do next. She wanted to learn how to speak.
Miss Fuller was delighted.
Despite the disapproval of Helen's parents, Miss Fuller began the
lessons which would eventually lead the little girl into a life where
she would constantly be in the public eye, where crowds would gaze in
awe and admiration at a curiosity whose achievements almost defied
belief.
Helen's first lesson lasted two hours and involved tracing her
fingers, tentatively at first, around the outline of Miss Fuller's
face, mouth and neck. She discovered every part of her patient
teacher's mouth, tongue, teeth, lips and palate until she understood
how vital they all were for the power of speech. Miss Fuller
then began to shape Helen's own mouth for making basic vowel sounds
and placed the eager child's hand on her windpipe so that she could
feel the vibrations. Next, she placed Helen's fingers on her
tongue, so that she could feel the movement it made when she uttered a
noise. The teacher was astounded when Helen's hands flew to her
own mouth and throat and repeated the sound she had just made so
perfectly that it could have been an echo.
Six years after making that first sound, Helen Keller could speak.
Despite the fact that she still could not see or hear, her remaining
senses unaccountably, became so finely attuned that she actually
learned to 'feel' colours. The only way she could explain this
incredible freak phenomenon was by saying that to her sensitive
fingers, different colours seemed to radiate different forms of energy
which she was capable of picking up. Later, this remarkable
eyeless sight enabled her to appreciate the rich colours of an oil
painting; she could 'see' with her fingertips the magnificent hues of
a sunset on canvas just as others could see them with their eyes.
Helen also developed an acute, unerringly accurate sense of smell,
where normal people so easily distinguished friends simply by looking
at them, Helen could detect them with her nose. When upset, she
would run to her mother simply by following the scent!
Throughout her life, she could uncannily sense which of her friends or
colleagues were in the room with her before they made themselves known
by using the manual alphabet.
Her nimble mind helped her earn several university degrees and in her
twenties Helen became the talk of America, with a series of tours,
public meetings and lectures which she gave in the hope of helping
others like herself. Hands, nose, speech and intuition turned
her into a celebrity - and a sensation in the medical world.
With true identity though, she never joined the garish and crude peep
show circuit, preferring to tour independently and use her special
gifts to try to open up a new world for others in darkness and
despair. |
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