I seem to recall that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was pretty sickly, and spent a lot of time working himself up so that he became something of an athlete in college, but he still got sick a lot. Or something like that.
Helio Gracie - Hélio Gracie - Wikipedia
Frail as a child, famous for his fighting skills.
King George VI of Great Britain
Paul I of Russia
Jerome Bettis
Both Wilbur and Orville Wright had significant illnesses when young.
Bob Gibson the HOF pitcher.
Wikipedia: Despite a childhood filled with health problems, including rickets, asthma, pneumonia, and a heart murmur, he was active in sports as a youth, particularly baseball and basketball. He won a basketball scholarship to Creighton University.
If we allow injuries as well as actual illnesses, Glenn Cunningham deserves mention. Cunningham was a distance runner during the 30s who was the world record holder for the mile at that time. He was also the poster child for “overcompensation”. As a young boy, he was severely burned in an accident which very nearly killed him, and caused doctors to reccomend amputation of his legs, which his mother rejected. They didn’t think he would walk again, much less compete in foot races or set world records.
Plenty of Hemophilia in the Romanoff Dynasty.
George Washington Carver, one of my botanical heroes:
Carver’s early illness and weakened constitution is poignant to me; it allowed him out of the harsh fieldwork he most likely would have had to do, and so allowed him to develop his fine mind. He became a maverick agricultural scientist, and also a great example of breaking the racial barriers.
One of Carver’s supporters Theodore Roosevelt, from an entirely different background, was also a sickly child. He certainly made up for that, as his historical image is of a robust fighter.
Although I ain’t at all famous, I was a rather frail small child, and dealt with debilitating asthma, laying up in bed, away from school, for periods of time. As a kid, those times were hard; I remember fighting to breathe at night, and wondering if I would die if I slept and stopped. It was terrifying. That experience definitely shifted my world view to appreciating every day, and led me to reading and exploring what it means to be here, and not just going by status quo.
How could I have forgotten Wilma Rudolph? A classic story, an inspiration for all.
Wow, thanks for that link. I had never heard of her. It definitely brought a tear to my eye. Ok, more than one tear.
IMHO, Jerome Bettis should be the poster child for asthma. When I was growing up, children with asthma weren’t allowed to play at recess, participate in sports, etc. How this dude is now playing in the NFL is beyond me. They accomodate him pretty easily. I heard that every sideline coach carries an emergency inhaler.
Gene Roddenberry claimed to have been a sickly child who developed a major obsession with books due to not being able to go out and play.
Robert Louis Stevenson fits the description - link
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he was was often bedridden with illness, and his mother and nanny spent much of this time reading him stories. Young Louis began writing his own stories when he was just six years old.
No, there was not “plenty” of hemophilia in the Romanov dynasty, Bosda. There was exactly ONE hemophiliac-the last Tsarevich, Alexei, and being as he was murdered two weeks before his fourteenth birthday, I’d hardly consider him “successful”. Prior to Alexei, there had been NO hemophiliacs in the Russian royals-it was brought in through Tsaritsa Alexandra, a granddaughter of Victoria.
All of the royal hemophiliacs either died as children, or as young adults.
Auntbeast, he has done PSAs for asthma and he’s a spokesman for Glaxo-Smith-Kline. He recently did one during the Super Bowl that was a tribute to the 1970s Coke ad with Mean Joe Green.
Emperors Augustus and TIberius.
There’s also a wonderful moving film about Wilma Rudolph, which I saw some years ago on the sports channel, but can’t find on imdb.
Another famous sickly child is the children’s books author Rosemary Sutcliff.
Not to be negative, and no offense intended, but I would think if you were a child at any point in history up until 1950 or so, you had a good chance of being sickly, as the many posts here show- none of the replies are for people under 50.
I wonder if German author Karl May would count, too? He was blind as a child (probably Vitamin-A-deficiency - there was a hunger problem in saxony during these years), but was cured at age 5. He didn’t read during this time, but in his autobiography, he says that instead of playing outside with the other children (or helping his father, a weaver, with his work), he was told fairy stories by his dear grandmother, which he says influenced - together with the blindess itself - his turn inwards to fantasy and creativity.
Jean - I think the extraordinary cases aren’t that many children before modern medicine easily got sick (and many children died before turning 5; and many women and blacks and so on couldn’t achieve success despite talent because of social barriers…) but that some of the people mentioned above didn’t give up and stay “sickly child” even after a debiliating disease - like the sportlers mentioned, overcoming the odds and handicaps to not only walk again after being crippled, but become sucessful in sports! That requires a lot of willpower, spirit and determination - which should be admired.
Secondly, most children, before TV and PCs and similar, spent most of the time outside running around playing games, so an illness that caused a child to spend long hours of the day still, therefore turning to books and thinking and creativity, was unusual.
Of course, there are many famous people who overcame other barriers; many children who overcame odds with great efforts, but didn’t get famous, “only” achieving their personal full potential, etc.
And today, with sick or handicapped children, there is still the danger of parents and caretakers and teachers coddling too much instead of making the child strive to achieve his own personal limits (although awareness of this being bad has gotten much better in the last decades, I think).
And though children today spent most of their time sitting still inside instead of running around outside, most of them probably aren’t reading books by the ton, but watching TV and playing computer games passivly.
So telling some inspiring stories of people who overcame the odds is a good idea, I think.
Would a broken leg on H. G. Wells qualify?
A defining incident of young Wells’ life is said to be an accident he had in 1874 when he was seven years old. He was dropped on a tent peg at the local sports ground and was left bedridden for a time with a broken leg. To pass the time, he started reading and soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write.