According to the website Live Science, Helen Keller almost certainly contracted meningococcal meningitis when she became ill at nineteen months of age.
Meningitis is caused by a bacterium that's easily spread by coughing and sneezing. In fact, many states require middle and high school students to be vaccinated against it. While most people who get meningitis get over it quickly, it can lead to deadly inflammation of the spinal cord and brain.
Meningococcal meningitis kills about 50% of patients who don't get effective treatment—antibiotics—which didn't exist at the time of her illness. About 10% percent of those who do survive without treatment are left with disabilities such as blindness and deafness. Keller was most likely a meningitis survivor.
Some have speculated that Keller may have had flu—also treated today with antibiotics—but the death rate among children at the time was 97%. Others suggest strep throat but again, without antibiotics, the death rate at the time was nearly 100%. This process of elimination suggests Keller likely survived meningococcal meningitis.
Helen Keller was nineteen months when she got sick. Helen came down with a fever and describes her illness in her memoir as an acute brain and stomach congestion. This explanation, however, does not tell us much. Some sources believe the illness was either meningitis or scarlet fever.
Whatever the case, Keller describes her world gradually becoming dimmer and dimmer as she lost her sight. She says she gradually got used to living in a world of darkness and silence.
Even though Helen was a very young child when she went blind and deaf, she still retained some fleeting memories of sight and sound. These, she says, became buried until her teacher, Miss Sullivan, came to live with the family and helped unlock her ability to communicate and remember.
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