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Helen was born a normal child. She started speaking when she was six months old. By the time she was a year old, she was able to communicate with her parents and she had also learned to walk.
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When Helen was eighteen months old an illness developed that the doctor described as brain congestion. She ran a high fever for many days, and then the fever was gone. Helen was left deaf and blind from the illness. Helen became a very wild, unruly child. She would scream and kick when she was angry and giggle and laugh when happy. She developed many of her own signals to communicate her needs with her parents.
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Perkins Institute for the Blind
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Anne Sullivan was with Helen day and night, constantly spelling into her hand the words and ideas of things going on around them. Helen was a quick learner. In only three years she learned the manual alphabet (sign language), the Braille alphabet (an alphabet created by Louis Braille [1809–1852] for the blind that relies on raised dots to communicate), and she could read and write
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She did this by using her fingers to spell letters into Helen's hand. From this she understood that objects had names, and that her teacher spelled these names into her hand. This unlocked a whole new world of learning for Helen.
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