Does anyone have thoughts on the modern name for the illness that afflicted Micheal in this novel? I read through some of the references Hannah Kent put at the end of the novel and came up with 'hypothyroidism'. Just curious if I'm right or if Hannah herself has talked about it anywhere?

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8 years ago
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P.D.R. Lindsay Heard Hannah Kent talk on this recently. She said she tried to make Michael not fit any known kind of illness because she didn't want readers to be saying 'oh he's got XYZ'. She wanted it to be a mystery to readers so that readers would wonder.

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Catherine Rolfe I'm a GP and nothing stood out (kept trying to diagnose him!) so either an infectious illness that's now vaccine preventable, or another theory in our book club was a possible acquired brain injury by his mother (Non accidental injury?) and that she suffered post natal depression and committed suicide (or simply left) rather than bring swept....

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Lucy H Hello, Hannah Kent speaks to this in the following interview, if you want to know more about Micheál's illness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SECD...

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Alex Munday Sounds more like some type of cerebral palsy based on the description of his inward bent wrists and stiff fingers, it isn't always detectable from birth and can cause difficulty with speech, vision, learning etc. I could be completely wrong though.
Having said that, iodine deficiency and resultant hypothyrodism can definitely cause problems (I listened to a Conversations podcast episode at your recommendation and it was about iodine deficiency). Did he have a goitre though?

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Kathy Prendergast Judging from the fact that the child appeared healthy and normal and developed normally in the first couple of years of his life, I had the impression he may have had some kind of degenerative genetic disorder, like the one that affected the little boy in the film Lorenzo`s Oil...there was of course absolutely no scientific explanation for those kinds of rare tragedies back then so I`m sure when they happened they sometimes gave rise to superstitions about things like fairies and changelings.

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Rohase Piercy He's described by the doctor as 'cretinous' and I've read elsewhere that 'cretinism' is (or was) linked to hypothyroidism cause by iodine deficiency ...

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Wendy Newton They said he had cretinism in the book which is an iodine deficiency which would explain his mothers fading death as well.

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Snow Fox I was thinking of spinal muscular atrophy when I was reading the book, that could explain why he lost control of his body and was losing it even further (Mary noticed he stopped wiggling his fingers at some pont). The poor kid could also have hypothyroidism on top of that.

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Helen Hagemann That's the beauty of fiction. You can make it up.

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Josephine Briggs This sounds like the disease, that Jewish babies get. It is very rare. Not only Jewish babies, but French Canadians and Irish, more rare in them. The child is very healthy, doing well, but fades away. Loses everything he or she has learned. I can't think of the name of the disease, but that sounds like what it is. Nora's grandson was a strong healthy baby, but faded into a worse than newborn.

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Vuyelwa Could it be progeria? "He looked old somehow. His skin was tight and dry, and there was a thinness to it...she had thought at first that it wasn't a child at all but some strange scarecrow...made from sticks and an old dress." This very sad and vivid description sounds like a sufferer from progeria.

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Meg Solomon I thought possibly mitochodrihal disease?

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