The Real Reason Mary Ingalls became Blind

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Mary Ingalls

I found this fascinating. A med student decided to look into the reason Mary Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie) went blind when her professor said it wouldn't have been due to scarlet fever.

 

[judiz]

I read about this a few years ago, I also heard she had strokes as well.

 

[genevieve]

too much masturbation?

 

[judiz]

Another true fact, Charles Ingalls was the last male Ingalls to survive infancy, He and Caroline had a son Freddy who died at 9 months, Laura's son with Almanzo died a week after birth and Laura's grandson by daughter Rose only lived a few hours.

 

[PeterG]

too much masturbation?

I'm not going to touch that one. Although living such a rural life, they were pretty hands-on people... Darn it!

 

[jamesy]

too much masturbation?

Idle hands are the devil's tools.

 

[Artemis@BC]

"Tonight, on a very special episode of Little House on the Prairie..."

 

[Wyliefan]

Another true fact, Charles Ingalls was the last male Ingalls to survive infancy, He and Caroline had a son Freddy who died at 9 months, Laura's son with Almanzo died a week after birth and Laura's grandson by daughter Rose only lived a few hours.

Wow, that's strange. And sad.

 

[ballettmaus]

Another true fact, Charles Ingalls was the last male Ingalls to survive infancy, He and Caroline had a son Freddy who died at 9 months, Laura's son with Almanzo died a week after birth and Laura's grandson by daughter Rose only lived a few hours.

That would actually be a thing I'd find far more interesting to research than the cause of Mary's blindness because I'd say, Charles Ingalls must have carried a gene or something in him which he passed on to his daughters which caused the infant death of the male children born into the family. What's interesting is is that all male children were born and none were miscarried.

I'm puzzled that article suspects that the cause for Mary's blindness was altered on purpose. Why couldn't it be possible that doctors hadn't been aware of the real cause back then? Or rather, maybe they were aware that it was an inflammation which caused her blindness but attributed that to Scarlet Fever? Maybe it was a "go-to" diagnosis back then?

 

[judiz]

I found a website today with some trivia about the real Ingalls family including why Mary's death was listed as Scarlett Fever in the books. The author of the website speculated that the real cause was too scary for the child audience the books were intended for.

As for the Ingalls medical history, all that has been made public was that Charles, Laura, Carrie and Grace were all diabetics and diabetes contributed to their deaths.

 

[TheGirlCanSkate]

I found a website today with some trivia about the real Ingalls family including why Mary's death was listed as Scarlett Fever in the books. The author of the website speculated that the real cause was too scary for the child audience the books were intended for.

As for the Ingalls medical history, all that has been made public was that Charles, Laura, Carrie and Grace were all diabetics and diabetes contributed to their deaths.

That is interesting because I had gestational diabetes and the doctor was more concerned I was carrying a boy with it and I was in labor a month early. He said lungs develop more slowly in boys.

Oddly, I learned this winter I am not the first born in my family. I had an older brother who died within days of birth due to underdeveloped lungs.

Gd was not diagnosed/looked for when my mom was young.

 

[Aussie Willy]

As a fan of the books and show this is very in interesting. Thanks.

 

[danceronice]

Question, as I'm not at the house where any of my Little House stuff is (nonfiction and the books; the TV show was ridiculous): Didn't Charles have brothers? I'm fairly sure he did and least one survived childhood.

 

[judiz]

Yes, Charles did have siblings, when I said he was the last Ingalls to survive infancy, I was referring to his children and their off spring.

 

[danceronice]

Yes, Charles did have siblings, when I said he was the last Ingalls to survive infancy, I was referring to his children and their off spring.

It would be interesting to know if any of his brothers had surviving male offspring, then.

 

[mag]

My understanding is that it was Grace who was diabetic. Laura lived to a very old age so I find it hard to believe she was diabetic - given the lack of available treatment. Interestingly, Laura was the only one of the daughters to have a child. Mary didn't marry and Carrie married later in life and raised a few step children. I am fairly sure Grace did not have children.

Anyone who is fan should visit De Smet South Dakota. The family homestead is open to visitors and is fabulous. It is really great for young children as they can look and touch and actually try stuff like twisting hay, driving a wagon, sitting in school etc.

 

[Buzz]

Loved Little House On The Prairie growing up and I am very happy to see both the story and it's author are still so popular.

 

[judiz]

It would be interesting to know if any of his brothers had surviving male offspring, then.

Yes they did. It is possible that both Charles and his wife Caroline had a defective gene that caused infancy death only in males.

 

[Veronika]

I had scarlet fever twice...lucky me.

 

[ballettmaus]

Yes they did. It is possible that both Charles and his wife Caroline had a defective gene that caused infancy death only in males.

Or maybe it was just Caroline who had the defect?
Either way, one sibling could have it, the others don't have to have it. After all, not all of tsar Nicholas' childrens were haemophiliacs.

My understanding is that it was Grace who was diabetic. Laura lived to a very old age so I find it hard to believe she was diabetic - given the lack of available treatment. Interestingly, Laura was the only one of the daughters to have a child. Mary didn't marry and Carrie married later in life and raised a few step children. I am fairly sure Grace did not have children.

I think you're right. I think I remember realizing a while ago that Rose Wilder was the last relative of that family. And Laura lived by far the longest of all of them. As a matter of fact, if memory serves me right she outlived every one of her siblings.

 

[Marge_Simpson]

Hemophilia is sex-linked, Nicholas and Alexandra's four daughters were not affected, although it is possible they were carriers.

 

[allezfred]

too much masturbation?

You stole my line!

 

[clairecloutier]

Or maybe it was just Caroline who had the defect?.

Caroline also had many siblings, most of whom had multiple children including boys, so Probably not.

Some factoids from reading Pioneer Girl, the annotated version of Laura's original memoir:

--Two of Caroline's siblings married two of Charles's siblings. So Laura had 2 sets of double cousins. The Aunt Eliza/Uncle Peter/Alice /Ella/Peter family that visits for Christmas in the first book of the series was one of these families; Uncle Peter was Charles's older brother, Aunt Eliza was Caroline's younger sister.
--There are lots of family photographs in Pioneer Girl. They show a strong resemblance between Charles and Laura--they had the same wide-set, very striking, intense-looking blue eyes. Photos show her Uncle Peter and cousin Peter had the same eyes--an Ingalls trait it seems. Cousin Peter looked very much like Laura.
--this is total trivia, but I was amazed to read about one of Caroline's older sisters, who married in her 20s, had like 10 kids, and then had not one but TWO sets of twins in her 40s. Back in the mid-1800s. With no running water, no formula, no disposable diapers ....Unbelievable, I can't imagine this woman's life!!

 

[Susan1]

It would be interesting to know if any of his brothers had surviving male offspring, then.

If this is accurate - http://pennyn.tripod.com (toward the bottom)
Laura had lots of male cousins on both sides.

I saw the article a couple days ago. It bugs me that they are trying to discredit a dead woman for writing in a book that Mary had scarlet fever. It wasn't even a whole chapter or anything. It was just mentioned once. It's a children's book. Did they want a whole chronology of her illness with big technical words? Did they think that all the girls who read the books would think that if their children got scarlet fever they would go blind? The books were a fictionalized account of Laura's memories for children. None of the books talked about them having to work in a hotel with a saloon with "loose women" and murders in Burr Oak.

Don't the researchers in the article have something better to do with their time and money? For those of you who are interested (but not interested enough to plow through ~1,000,000 wonderful pages of Pioneer Girl), I have had a book since 1979 called "Laura - The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder" by Donald Zochert. All of the kids had scarlet fever while they were all living with Peter and Eliza before they went to Plum Creek in ~1873. Mary did not lose her sight till ~1879. She was "suddenly taken with a pain in the head" and had a stroke and then lost her eyesight. She never married or taught at a blind school. She lived with Ma and Pa, and then Carrie and Grace before she died.

Is somebody going to pay me to spend 15 minutes researching that from a book that was already written?

And I don't get where they are coming up with Laura having and dying of diabetes. She was 90 years old. Could you live with diabetes for that long back then?

If I had a bucket list (and won the lottery) seeing all the Little House sites would be on it.

 

[danceronice]

My question would be do they think Laura had a lab available to do a culture and see exactly what disease they really had? She (or, if you can believe some sources, she and Rose, mostly Rose editing) wrote a young readers' book about her life growing up, as she (a woman with, after all, basically a 19th century rural school education) remembered it decades later.

I don't get where they're getting diabetes, either--I suppose if it was a very minor subacute case, but Laura lived to be very old (what's even past average for modern day). Or why there has to be anything odd about how her family members died. they were born in the early to mid 19th century, dying in ones fifties, sixties, and seventies was incredibly normal. I'm fairly sure it's the Zuchert book I have (it's not at this house so I don't have it handy) but there's nothing really notable that I remember about her family's lifespans. Her parents live to a reasonable age for the era, her sisters mostly appear to, there's nothing exceptional about a blind girl never marrying so Mary dying childless is more expected than anything, I don't remember Grace or Carrie dying at an odd age. As far as Rose not having descendants to say she had an odd life would be an understatement and I wouldn't use her only having one child who dies as being indicative.

Really, I don't know why, since none of his family seems to have had problems, Charles not having male descendants would seem strange. They have only five children, the baby who died just happened to be the male. And Laura lost a male baby out of two (the odder question is why she doesn't have more, but possibly she just had a hard time getting and staying pregnant. My grandmother was another teeny-tiny woman and my mother was her only successful pregnancy.) This is pre-vaccines and pre-antibiotics, babies die. It's just what they do. Too small a sample to assume something unusual about the dead ones being males.

 

[mag]

@danceronice I believe Laura and Almanzo also had diphtheria when Rose was a little girl. I think she talks about it in The First Four Years. I don't know if that would have a affect on either of them with respect to having children.

 

[Skittl1321]

Why do people think that anyone is trying to discredit Laura's writing, so much as find an interesting historical fact? Laura's writing is fiction; but many people are very interested in her family, so it is interesting to know what the likely true cause of Mary's blindness is.

 

[Lucy25]

The article I read a few days ago that mentioned a doctor being greatful this news is coming out because of all the misinformation about scarlet fever. She said that many children who get strep throat also get scarlet fever and that the parents panic because they fear the possibility of scarlet fever. All recall hearing this on Little House.

I do not recall reading any article where Laura has been criticized for editing Mary's real illness for her children's books. All seem to understand why it was done.

Being one of the many Little House nerds (), I have done the tour, ending in De Smet. Walking around the Surveyer's house and the Ingall's last house just outside of town was surreal. It was sad to hear that after Pa died, Ma had to rent out half the house to make end's meet. I loved going to their homestead and seeing that the 5 trees are still there. I never understood exactly what the Big Slough was until I saw it.

 

[Lucy25]

And I don't get where they are coming up with Laura having and dying of diabetes. She was 90 years old. Could you live with diabetes for that long back then?

If I had a bucket list (and won the lottery) seeing all the Little House sites would be on it.

Laura most certainly did not not have diabetes. I have no idea where that could have come from, lol. I was on several tours at the various Little House sites, and this was never brought up.

 

[Susan1]

Laura most certainly did not not have diabetes. I have no idea where that could have come from, lol. I was on several tours at the various Little House sites, and this was never brought up.

Maybe she had whatever counted as diabetes at the time of her death, as a side effect of the heart problem that killed her? She was 90 years old, overweight, she probably had kidney problems by then. I don't know. It was 1957. Puzzles me too. It's on all of their Wiki pages. How likely is that?

(Side 1 - my friend's sister was born in 1950, had diabetes all her life, gave herself an insulin shot every day <I only saw her do this after she was a teenager>, lost a leg in her 30's and the big toe on the other foot right after that from diabetes. And she had all the modern medical care there was. What could make the doctors diagnose diabetes in all of the Ingalls deaths in earlier 1900's?)

(Side 2 - maybe they just did a glucose test <in 1902??> as they died. ha ha I had one once that showed I had Type 2 diabetes, but I had just eaten one of those Hostess pies <450 calories> so I wouldn't pass out. A week later, after not eating a 450 calorie Hostess pie , it was normal.)

(Side 3 - my grandmother's cause of death in 1974 was listed as kidney failure because that's what organs do at the end - they shut down. She did not ever have kidney problems. She was actually built like Laura in the later years, now that I think about it.) Anyway:

danceronice - From my Zochert book appendix -
(approximately because I just subtracted the years not the months)
Charles WAS only 66 when he died?
Caroline was 85
Mary was 63
Carrie was 76 (and she was always sickly/frail/weak)
Grace was 64

With all of Almanzo's health problems, he lived to be 92!!!!

Yeah, I'm a Little House nerd too!