Medicine: Addle Belle & Annabelle

When Addie Belle Barton of Mount Vernon, Ohio was two years old, she was accidentally shot in the eye with a BB gun, became so terrified that she lost her voice for good. At 20, Addie Belle silently conceived and bore an illegitimate child which her mother called Annabelle. Overcome by shame, Addie Belle Barton retreated with Annabelle to a bare bedroom on the first floor of her parents’ old frame house. She rarely emerged, often locked the door, kept frisky little Annabelle well hidden from neighbors’ prying eyes. Sometimes at night Addie Belle’s mother would tiptoe across the sticky linoleum floor and listen at Addie Belle’s bed. The sleeping girl-mother babbled long monologues in gibberish.

Like her mother, Baby Annabelle never talked, but when the two were alone they would communicate in sign language. Addie Belle gave small thought to her own hollow cheeks and stringy hair but she brooded long over the bowed legs of her pretty, undernourished child. Several months ago she summoned all her courage and fled with six-year-old Annabelle to the office of Dr. Robert Lemon Eastman. Trembling with fear, she pointed to Annabelle’s legs, indicated that she wanted Dr. Eastman to straighten them. The surprised physician examined the child, later went to Columbus to tell psychologists at Ohio State University about the remarkable pair.

Last week Addie Belle and Annabelle were separated for the first time. Assistant Professor of Phonetics Marie Katherine Mason of Ohio State examined Addie Belle and reported that she now had a serious hearing impairment, was almost deaf. She had suffered so long from hysteria which had deprived her of her voice that the condition was now chronic* and there was small chance she would ever leave her solitary world and participate in normal social life.

Baby Annabelle was taken to Children’s Hospital, and found normal. “She has no concept of spoken words,” said Miss Mason, “but she is apparently alert to sounds.” Her education will proceed slowly, will start with associations between objects and words. Miss Mason hopes that within two years Annabelle will have her legs straightened, attend school like any other normal child.

*Any ailment may have a psychological cause and appear indistinguishable from a genuine organic disease. Doctors used to treat such hysteria with hypnosis, now try psychoanalysis. Addie Belle’s deafness prevents this sort of treatment.