A woman who lost the ability to smell, taste, see, and hear as a child was the first deaf-blind person to be fully educated

The woman was Laura Bridgman. Bridgman was born in 1829 and it is thought she had full use of all her senses at birth. However, at the age of two years old, she became sick with scarlet fever, due to which she lost her sight and hearing. It was later discovered, after she was educated, that she had lost or never had a sense of smell and she also had nearly no sense of taste.

The one sense she did have was touch. Amazingly, even with only this one sense and no real language, she was still pretty handy around the house as a child. She enjoyed mimicking actions demonstrated to her through touch, so her mother used this to teach her how to do certain household chores. She even learned to sew and knit.

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