THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF OUR BRAIN
Helen Keller was born in 1880 with the ability to see and hear. At 19 months old, she contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain," which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness left her both deaf and blind. In 1886, Keller's parents were referred to Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind in South Boston. There they were put in touch with 20-year-old former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, who would become Helen's teacher and companion for the next 49 years of her life.
Anne Sullivan arrived at Keller's house in March 1887 and immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller was frustrated at first, because she did not understand that every object had a word uniquely identifying it. Keller's big breakthrough in communication came when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water." She then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other objects in her world. Helen Keller was viewed as isolated but she was in fact, very in touch with the outside world.
Keller went on to become a prolific author and outspoken proponent for the rights of deaf people. She died at age 87 in 1968.