Robert Anton Wilson was born in either Brooklyn or Long Island (he doesn't remember which) on January 18, 1932. He was raised in an Irish-Catholic ghetto, where he attended a Catholic school, where the strict dogma may have inspired him to be the rebel he is today. At the age of 4, Wilson came down with a case of childhood polio, which was apparently cured by the Sister Kenny method of physical therapy, which was seen by the medical community of that time (1938), as quackery.