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STAMMERING
ITS CAUSE AND CURE
BY
BENJAMIN NATHANIEL BOGUE
A Chronic Stammerer for Almost Twenty Years; Originator of the Bogue
Unit Method of Restoring Perfect Speech; Founder of the Bogue Institute
for Stammerers and Editor of the "Emancipator," a magazine devoted to
the Interests of Perfect Speech
TO MY MOTHER
That wonderful woman whose unflagging courage held me to a task that I
never could have completed alone and who when all others failed, stood
by me, encouraged me and pointed out the heights where lay
success--this volume is dedicated
CONTENTS
Preface
PART I--MY LIFE AS A STAMMERER
I. Starting Life Under a Handicap
II. My First Attempt to Be Cured
III. My Search Continues
IV. A Stammerer Hunts a Job
V. Further Futile Attempts to Be Cured
VI. I Refuse to Be Discouraged
VII. The Benefit of Many Failures
VIII. Beginning Where Others Had Left Off
PART II--STAMMERING AND STUTTERING
The Causes, Peculiarities, Tendencies and Effects
I. Speech Disorders Defined
II. The Causes of Stuttering and Stammering
III. The Peculiarities of Stuttering and Stammering
IV. The Intermittent Tendency
V. The Progressive Tendency
VI. Can Stammering and Stuttering Be Outgrown?
VII. The Effect on the Mind
VIII. The Effect on the Body
IX. Defective Speech in Children, (1) The Pre-Speaking Period
X. Defective Speech in Children, (2) The Formative Period
XI. Defective Speech in Children, (3) The Speech-Setting Period
XII. The Speech Disorders of Youth
XIII. Where Does Stammering Lead?
PART III--THE CURE OF STAMMERING AND STUTTERING
I. Can Stammering Really Be Cured?
II. Cases That "Cure Themselves"
III. Cases That Cannot Be Cured
IV. Can Stammering Be Cured by Mail?
V. The Importance of Expert Diagnosis
VI. The Secret of Curing Stuttering and Stammering
VII. The Bogue Unit Method Described
VIII. Some Cases I Have Met
PART IV--SETTING THE TONGUE FREE
I. The Joy of Perfect Speech
II. How to Determine Whether You Can Be Cured
III. The Bogue Guarantee and What It Means
IV. The Cure Is Permanent
V. A Priceless Gift--An Everlasting Investment
VI. The Home of Perfect Speech
VII. My Mother and The Home Life at the Institute
VIII. A Heart-to-Heart Talk with Parents
IX. The Dangers of Delay
PREFACE
Considerably more than a third of a century has elapsed since I
purchased my first book on stammering. I still have that quaint little
book made up in its typically English style with small pages, small
type and yellow paper back--the work of an English author whose obtuse
and half-baked theories certainly lent no clarity to the stammerer's
understanding of his trouble. Since that first purchase my library of
books on stammering has grown until it is perhaps the largest
individual collection in the world. I have read these books--many of
them several times, pondered over the obscurities in some, smiled at
the absurdities in others and benefited by the truths in a few. Yet,
with all their profound explanations of theories and their verbose
defense of hopelessly unscientific methods, the stammerer would be
disappointed indeed, should he attempt to find in the entire collection
a practical and understandable discussion of his trouble.
This insufficiency of existing books on stammering has encouraged me to
bring out the present volume. It is needed. I know this--because I
spent almost twenty years of my life in a well-nigh futile search for
the very knowledge herein revealed. I haunted the libraries, was a
familiar figure in book stores and a frequent visitor to the
second-hand dealer. Yet these efforts brought me comparatively
little--not one-tenth the information that this book contains.
Perhaps it is but a colossal conceit that prompts me to offer this
volume to those who stutter and stammer as I did. Yet, I cannot but
believe that almost twenty years' personal experience as a stammerer
plus more than twenty-eight years' experience in curing speech
disorders has supplied me with an intensely practical, valuable and
worth-while knowledge on which to base this book.
After having stammered for twenty years you have pretty well run the
whole gamut of mockery, humiliation and failure. You understand the
stammerer's feelings, his mental processes and his peculiarities.
And when you add to this more than a quarter of a century, every waking
hour of which has been spent in alleviating the stammerer's
difficulty--and successfully, too--you have a ground-work of first-hand
information that tends toward facts instead of fiction and toward
practice instead of theory.
These are my qualifications.
I have spent a life-time in studying stammering, stuttering and kindred
speech defects. I have written this book out of the fullness of that
experience--I might almost say out of my daily work. I have made no
attempt at literary style or rhetorical excellence and while the work
may be homely in expression the information it contains is definite and
positive--and what is more important--it is authoritative.
I hope the reader will find the book useful--yes, and helpful. I hope
he will find in it the way to Freedom of Speech--his birthright and the
birthright of every man.
BENJAMIN NATHANIEL BOGUE
Indianapolis September, 1929
STAMMERING
Its Cause and Cure
PART I
MY LIFE AS A STAMMERER
CHAPTER I
STARTING LIFE UNDER A HANDICAP
I was laughed at for nearly twenty years because I stammered. I found
school a burden, college a practical impossibility and life a misery
because of my affliction.
I was born in Wabash county, Indiana, and as far back as I can
remember, there was never a time when I did not stammer or stutter. So
far as I know, the halting utterance came with the first word I spoke
and for almost twenty years this difficulty continued to dog me
relentlessly.
When six years of age, I went to the little school house down the road,
little realizing what I was to go through with there before I left.
Previous to the time I entered school, those around me were my family,
my relatives and my friends--people who were very kind and considerate,
who never spoke of my difficulty in my presence, and certainly never
laughed at me.
At school, it was quite another matter. It was fun for the other boys
to hear me speak and it was common pastime with them to get me to talk
whenever possible. They would jibe and jeer--and then ask, "What did
you say? Why don't you learn to talk English?" Their best entertainment
was to tease and mock me until I became angry, taunt me when I did, and
ridicule me at every turn.
It was not only in the school yard and going to and from school that I
suffered--but also in class. When I got up to recite, what a spectacle
I made, hesitating over every other word, stumbling along, gasping for
breath, waiting while speech returned to me. And how they laughed at
me--for then I was helpless to defend myself. True, my teachers tried
to be kind to me, but that did not make me talk normally like other
children, nor did it always prevent the others from laughing at me.
The reader can imagine my state of mind during these school days. I
fairly hated even to start to school in the morning--not because I
disliked to go to school, but because I was sure to meet some of my
taunting comrades, sure to be humiliated and laughed at because I
stammered. And having reached the school room I had to face the
prospect of failing every time I stood up on my feet and tried to
recite.
There were four things I looked forward to with positive dread--the
trip to school, the recitations in class, recess in the school yard and
the trip home again. It makes me shudder even now to think of those
days--the dread with which I left that home of mine every school day
morning, the nervous strain, the torment and torture, and the constant
fear of failure which never left me. Imagine my thoughts as I left
parents and friends to face the ribald laughter of those who did not
understand. I asked myself: "Well, what new disgrace today? Whom will I
meet this morning? What will the teacher say when I stumble? How shall
I get through recess? What is the easiest way home?"
These and a hundred other questions, born of nervousness and fear, I
asked myself morning after morning. And day after day, as the hours
dragged by, I would wonder, "Will this day NEVER end? Will I NEVER get
out of this?"
Such was my life in school. And such is the daily life of thousands of
boys and hundreds of girls--a life of dread, of constant fear, of
endless worry and unceasing nervousness.
But, as I look back at the boys and girls who helped to make life
miserable for me in school, I feel for them only kindness. I bear no
malice. They did no more than their fathers and mothers, many of them,
would have done. They little realized what they were doing. They had no
intention to do me personal injury, though there is no question in my
mind but that they made my trouble worse. They did not know how
terribly they were punishing me. They saw in my affliction only fun,
while I saw in it--only misery.
CHAPTER II
MY FIRST ATTEMPT TO BE CURED
I can remember very clearly the positive fear which always accompanied
a visit to our friends or neighbors, or the advent of visitors at my
home. Many a time I did not have what I desired to eat because I was
afraid to ask for it. When I did ask, every eye was turned on me, and
the looks of the strangers, with now and then a half-suppressed smile,
worked me up to a nervous state that was almost hysterical, causing me
to stutter worse than at any other time.
At one time--I do not remember what the occasion was--a number of
people had come to visit us. A large table had been set and loaded with
good things. We sat down, the many dishes were passed around the table,
as was the custom at our home, and I said not a word. But before long
the first helping was gone--a hungry boy soon cleans his plate--and I
was about to ask for more when I bethought myself. "Please pass--" I
could never do it--"p" was one of the hard sounds for me. "Please
pass--" No, I couldn't do it. So busying myself with the things that
were near at hand and helping myself to those things which came my way,
I made out the meal--but I got up from the table hungry and with a
deeper consciousness of the awfulness of my affliction. Slowly it began
to dawn on me that as long as I stammered I was doomed to do without
much of the world's goods. I began to see that although I might for a
time sit at the World's Table of Good Things in Life I could hope to
have little save that which someone passed on to me gratuitously.
As long as I was at home with my parents, life went along fairly well.
They understood my difficulty, they sympathized with me, and they
looked at my trouble in the same light as myself--as an affliction much
to be regretted. At home I was not required to do anything which would
embarrass me or cause me to become highly excited because of my
straining to talk, but on the other hand I was permitted to do things
which I could do well, without talking to any one.
The time was coming, however, when it would be "Sink or Swim" for me,
since it would not be many years until a sense of duty, if nothing
else, would send me out to make my own way. This time comes to all
boys. It was soon to be MY task to face the world--to make a living for
myself. And this was a thing which, strangely enough for a boy of my
age, I began to think about. I had some experience in meeting people
and in trying to transact some of the minor business connected with our
farm and I found out that I had no chance along that line as long as I
stammered.
And yet it seemed as if I was to be compelled to continue to stammer
the rest of my life, for my condition was getting worse every day. This
was very clear to me--and very plain to my parents. They were anxious
to do something for me and do it quickly, so they called in a skilled
physician. They told him about my trouble. He gave me a cursory
examination and decided that my stuttering was caused by nervousness,
and gave me some very distasteful medicine, which I was compelled to
take three times a day. This medicine did me no good. I took it for
five years, but there was no progress made toward curing my stuttering.
The reason was simple. Stuttering cannot be cured by bitter medicine.
The physician was using the wrong method. He was treating the effect
and not the cause. He was of the opinion that it was the nervousness
that caused my stuttering, whereas the fact of the matter was, it was
my stuttering that caused the nervousness.
I do not blame this physician in the least because of his failure, for
he was not an expert on the subject of speech defects. While he was a
medical man of known ability, he had not made a study of speech
disorders and knew practically nothing about either the cause or cure
of stammering or stuttering. Even today, prominent medical men will
tell you that their profession has given little or no attention to
defects of speech and take little interest in such cases.
Some time later, after the physician had failed to benefit me, a
traveling medicine man came to our community, set up his tent, and
stayed for a week. Of course, like all traveling medicine men, his
remedies were cure-alls. One night in making his talk before the crowd,
he mentioned the fact that his wonderful concoction, taken with the
pamphlet that he would furnish, both for the sum of one dollar, would
cure stammering. I didn't have the dollar, so I did not buy. But the
next day I went back, and I took the dollar along. He got my dollar,
and I still have the book. Of course, I received no benefit whatever. I
later came to the conclusion that the medicine man had been in the
neighborhood long enough to have pointed out to him "BEN BOGUE'S BOY
WHO STUTTERS" (as I was known) and had decided that when I was in his
audience a hint or two on the virtues of his wonderful remedy in cases
of stammering, would be sufficient to extract a dollar from me for a
tryout.
These experiences, however, were valuable to me, even though they were
costly, for they taught me a badly-needed lesson, to wit: That drugs
and medicines are not a cure for stammering.
Many of the people who came in contact with me, and those who talked
the matter over with my parents, said that I would outgrow the trouble.
"All that is necessary," remarked one man, "is for him to forget that
he stammers, and the trouble will be gone."
This was a rather foolish suggestion and simply proved how little the
man knew about the subject. In the first place, a stammerer cannot
forget his difficulty--who can say that he would be cured if he did?
You might as well say to a man holding a hot poker, "If you will only
forget that the poker is hot, it will be cool." It takes something more
than forgetfulness to cure stammering.
The belief held by both my parents and myself that I would outgrow my
difficulty was one of the gravest mistakes we ever made. Had I followed
the advice of others who believed in the outgrowing theory it
eventually would have caused me to become a confirmed stammerer,
entirely beyond hope of cure.
Today, as a result of twenty-eight years' daily contact with
stammerers, I know that stammering cannot be outgrown. The man who
suggests that it is possible to cure stammering by outgrowing it is
doing a great injustice to the stammerer, because he is giving him a
false hope--in fact the most futile hope that any stammerer ever had. I
wish I could paint in the sky, in letters of fire, the truth that
"Stammering cannot be outgrown," because this, of all things, is the
most frequent pitfall of the stammerer, his greatest delusion and one
of the most prolific causes of continued suffering. I know whereof I
speak, because I tried it myself. I know how many different people held
up to me the hope that I would outgrow it.
My father offered me a valuable shotgun if I would stop stammering. My
mother offered me money, a watch and a horse and buggy. These
inducements made me strain every nerve to stop my imperfect utterance,
but all to no avail. At this time I knew nothing of the underlying
principles of speech and any effort which I made to stop my stammering
was merely a crude, misdirected attempt which naturally had no chances
for success.
I learned that prizes will never cure stammering. I found out too,
something I have never since forgotten: that the man, woman or child
who stammers needs no inducement to cause him to desire to be cured,
because the change from his condition as a stammerer to that of a
nonstammerer is of more inducement to the sufferer than all the money
you could offer him. I have never yet seen a man, woman or child who
wanted to stammer or stutter.
The offer of prizes doing no good, I took long trips to get my mind off
the affliction. I did everything in my power, worked almost day and
night, exerted every effort I could command--it was all in vain.
The idea that I would finally outgrow my difficulty was strengthened in
the minds of my parents and friends by the fact that there were times
when my impediment seemed almost to disappear, but to our surprise and
disappointment, it always came back again, each time in a more
aggravated form; each time with a stronger hold upon me than ever
before.
I found out, then, one of the fundamental characteristics of
stammering--its intermittent tendency. In other words, I discovered
that a partial relief from the difficulty was one of the true symptoms
of the malady. And I learned further that this relief is only temporary
and not what we first thought it to be, viz: a sign that the disorder
was leaving.
CHAPTER III
MY SEARCH CONTINUES
My parents' efforts to have me cured, however, did not cease with my
visit to the medicine man. We were still looking for something that
would bring relief. My teacher, Miss Cora Critchlow, handed me an
advertisement one day, telling me of a man who claimed to be able to
cure stammering by mail. In the hope that I would get some good from
the treatment, my parents sent this mail order man a large sum of
money. In return for this I was furnished with instructions to do a
number of useless things, such as holding toothpicks between my teeth,
talking through my nose, whistling before I spoke a word, and many
other foolish things. It was at this time that I learned once and for
all, the imprudence of throwing money away on these mail order "cures,"
so-called, and I made up my mind to bother no more with this man and
his kind.
So far as the mail order instructions were concerned, they were crude
and unscientific--merely a hodge-podge of pseudo-technical phraseology
and crass ignorance--a meaningless jargon scarcely intelligible to the
most highly educated, and practically impossible of interpretation by
the average stammerer who was supposed to follow the course. Even after
I had, by persistent effort, interpreted the instructions and followed
them closely for many months, there was not a sign of the slightest
relief from my trouble. It was evident to me even then that I could
never cure myself by following a mail cure.
Today, after twenty-eight years of experience in the cure of
stammering, I can say with full authority, that stammering cannot be
successfully treated by mail. The very nature of the difficulty, as
well as the method of treatment, make it impossible to put the
instructions into print or to have the stammerer follow out the method
from a printed sheet.
As I approached manhood, my impediment began to get worse. My
stuttering changed to stammering. Instead of rapidly repeating
syllables or words, I was unable to begin a word. I stood transfixed,
my limbs drawing themselves into all kinds of unnatural positions.
There were violent spasmodic movements of the head, and contractions of
my whole body. The muscles of my throat would swell, affecting the
respiratory organs, and causing a curious barking sound. When I finally
got started, I would utter the first part of the sentence slowly,
gradually increase the speed, and make a rush toward the end.
At other times, when attempting to speak, my lips would pucker up,
firmly set together, and I would be unable to separate them, until my
breath was exhausted. Then I would gasp for more breath, struggling
with the words I desired to speak, until the veins of my forehead would
swell, my face would become red, and I would sink back, wholly unable
to express myself, and usually being obliged to resort to writing.
These paroxysms left me extremely nervous and in a seriously weakened
condition. After one of these attacks, the cold perspiration would
break out on my forehead in great beads and I would sink into the
nearest chair, where I would be compelled to remain until I had
regained my strength.
My affliction was taking all my energy, sapping my strength, deadening
my mental faculties, and placing me at a hopeless disadvantage in every
way. I could do nothing that other people did. I appeared unnatural. I
was nervous, irritable, despondent. This despondency now brought about
a peculiar condition. I began to believe that everyone was more or less
an enemy of mine. And still worse, I came to believe that I was an
enemy of myself, which feeling threw me into despair, the depths of
which I do not wish to recall, even now.
I was not only miserably unhappy myself, I made everyone else around me
unhappy, although I did it, not intentionally, but because my
affliction had caused me to lose control of myself.
In this condition, my nerves were strained to the breaking point all
day long, and many a night I can remember crying myself to
sleep--crying purely to relieve that stored-up nervous tension, and f
ailing off to sleep as a result of exhaustion.
As I said before, there were periods of grace when the trouble seemed
almost to vanish and I would be delighted to believe that perhaps it
was gone forever--happy hope! But it was but a delusion, a mirage in
the distance, a new road to lead me astray. The affliction always
returned, as every stammerer knows--returned worse than before. All the
hopes that I would outgrow my trouble, were found to be false hopes.
For me, there was no such thing as outgrowing it and I have since
discovered that after the age of six only one-fifth of one per cent.
ever outgrow the trouble.
Another thing which I always thought peculiar when I was a stammerer
was the fact that I had practically no difficulty in talking to animals
when I was alone with them. I remember very well that we had a large
bulldog called Jim, which I was very fond of. I used to believe that
Jim understood my troubles better than any friend I had, unless it was
Old Sol, our family driving horse.
Jim used to go with me on all my jaunts--I could talk to him by the
hour and never stammer a word. And Old Sol--well, when everything
seemed to be going against me, I used to go out and talk things over
with Old Sol. Somehow he seemed to understand--he used to whinney
softly and rub his nose against my shoulder as if to say, "I
understand, Bennie, I understand!"
Somehow my father had discovered this peculiarity of my
affliction--that is, my ability to talk to animals or when alone.
Something suggested to him that my stammering could be cured, if I
could be kept by myself for several weeks. With this thought in mind,
he suggested that I go on a hunting and fishing trip in the wilds of
the northwest, taking no guide, no companion of any sort, so that there
would be no necessity of my speaking to any human being while I was
gone.
My father's idea was that if my vocal organs had a complete rest, I
would be restored to perfect speech. As I afterwards proved to my own
satisfaction by actual trial, this idea was entirely wrong. You can not
hope to restore the proper action of your vocal organs by ceasing to
use them. The proper functioning of any bodily organ is the result, not
of ceasing to use it at all, but rather of using it correctly.
This can be very easily proved to the satisfaction of any one. Take the
case of the small boy who boasts of his muscle. He is conscious of an
increasing strength in the muscles of his arm not because he has failed
to use these muscles but because he has used them continually, causing
a faster-than-ordinary development.
You can readily imagine that I looked forward to my "vacation" with
keen anticipation, for I had never been up in the northwest and I was
full of stories I had read and ideas I had formed of its wonders.
The trip, lasting two weeks, did me scarcely any good at all. The most
I can say for it is that it quieted my nerves and put me in somewhat
better physical condition, which a couple of weeks in the outdoor
country would do for any growing boy.
But this trip did not cure my stammering, nor did it tend to alleviate
the intensity of the trouble in the least, save through a lessened
nervous state for a few days. Today, after twenty-eight years'
experience, I know that it would be just as sensible to say that a
wagon stuck in the soft mud would get out by "resting" there as it is
to say that stammering can be eradicated by allowing the vocal organs
to rest through disuse.
Shortly after my return from the trip to the northwest, my father died,
with the result that our household was, for a time, very much broken
up. For a while, at least, my stammering, though not forgotten, did not
receive a great deal of attention, for there were many other things to
think about.
The summer following my father's death, however, I began again my
so-far fruitless search for a cure for my stammering, this time placing
myself under the care and instruction of a man claiming to be "The
World's Greatest Specialist in the Cure of Stammering." He may have
been the world's greatest specialist, but not in the cure of
stammering. He did succeed, however, by the use of his absurd methods,
in putting me through a course that resulted in the membrane and lining
of my throat and vocal organs becoming irritated and inflamed to such
an extent that I was compelled to undergo treatment for a throat
affection that threatened to be as serious as the stammering itself.
I tried everything that came to my attention--first one thing and then
another--but without results. Still I refused to be discouraged. I kept
on and on, my mother constantly encouraging and reassuring me. And you
will later see that I found a method that cured me.
There are always those who stand idly about and say, "It can't be
done!" Such people as these laughed at Fulton with his steamboat, they
laughed at Stephenson and his steam locomotive, they laughed at Wright
and the airplane.
They say, "It can't be done"--but it is done, nevertheless.
I turned a deaf ear to the people who tried to convince me that it
couldn't be done. I had a firm belief in that old adage, "Where there
is a will there is a way," and I made another of my own, which said, "I
will FIND a way or MAKE one!"
And I did!
CHAPTER IV
A STAMMERER HUNTS A JOB
After recovering from my sad experiment with the "Wonderful
Specialist," I did not want to go home and listen to the Anvil Chorus
of "It Can't Be Done!" and "I Told You So!" I had no desire to be the
object of laughter as well as pity. So I tried to get a job in that
same city. I went from office to office--but nobody had a job for a man
who stammered.
Finally I did land a job, however, such as it was. My duties were to
operate the elevator in a hotel. How I managed to get that job, I often
wonder now, for nobody on whom I called had any place for a boy or man
who stammered. I thought it would be easy to find a job where I
wouldn't need to talk, but when I started out to look for this job, I
found it wasn't so easy after all. Almost any job requires a man who
can talk. This I had learned in my own search for a place. But somehow
or other, I managed to get that job as elevator boy in a hotel.
For the work as elevator boy I was paid three dollars a week. Wasn't
that great pay for a man grown? But that's what I got.
That is, I got it for a little while, until I lost my job. For lose it
I did before very long. I found out that I couldn't do much with even
an elevator boy's job at three dollars a week unless I could talk. My
employer found it out, too, and then he found somebody who could take
my place--a boy who could answer when spoken to.
Well, here I was out of a job again. I am afraid I came pretty near
being discouraged about that time. Things looked pretty hopeless for
me--it was mighty hard work to get a job and the place didn't last long
after I had gotten it.
But, nevertheless, the only thing to do was to try again. I started the
search all over again. I tried first one place and then another. One
man wanted me to start out as a salesman. He showed me how I could make
more money than I had ever made in my life--convinced me that I could
make it. Then I started to tell my part of the story--but I didn't get
very far before he discovered that I was a stammerer. That was enough
for him--with a gesture of hopelessness, he turned to his desk. "You'll
never do, young man, you'll never do. You can't even talk!" And the
worst of it was that he was right.
I once thought I had landed a job as stock chaser in a factory, but
here, too, stammering barred the way, for they told me that even the
stock chaser had to be able to deliver verbal messages from one foreman
to another. I didn't dare to try that.
Eventually, I drifted around to the Union News Company. They wanted a
boy to sell newspapers on trams running out over the Grand Trunk
Railway. I took the job--the last job in the world I should have
expected to hold, because of all the places a newsboy's job is one
where you need to have a voice and the ability to talk.
I hope no stammerer ever has a position that causes him as much
humiliation and suffering as that job caused me. You can imagine what
it meant to me to go up and down the aisles of the train, calling
papers and every few moments finding out that I couldn't say what I
started out to say and then go gasping and grunting down the aisle
making all sorts of facial grimaces.
How the passengers laughed at me! And how they made fun of me and asked
me all sorts of questions just to hear me try to talk. It almost made
me wish I could never see a human being again, so keen was the
suffering and so tense were my nerves as a result of this work.
I don't believe I ever did anything that kept me in a more frenzied
mental state than this work of trying to sell newspapers--and it wasn't
very long (as I had expected) until the manager found out my situation
and gently let me out.
Then I gave up, all at once. Was I discouraged? Well, perhaps. But not
exactly discouraged. Rather I saw the plain hopelessness of trying to
get or hold a job in my condition. So I prepared to go home. I didn't
want to do it, because I knew the neighbors and friends round about
would be ready for me with, "I told you so" and "I knew it couldn't be
done" and a lot of gratuitous information like that.
But I gave up, nevertheless, deeply disappointed to think that once
again I had failed to be cured of stammering, yet all the while
resolving just as firmly as ever that I would try again and that I
would never give up hope as long as there remained anything for me to
do.
And this rule I followed out, month after month and year after year,
until in the end I was richly rewarded for my patience and persistence.
CHAPTER V
FURTHER FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO BE CURED
The next summer I decided to visit eastern institutions for the cure of
stammering and determine if these could do any more for me than had
already been done-which as the reader has seen, was practically
nothing. I bought a ticket for Philadelphia, where I remained for some
time, and where I gained more information of value than in all of my
previous efforts combined.
I found in the Quaker City an old man who had made speech defects
almost a life study. He knew more about the true principles of speech
and the underlying fundamentals in the production of voice than all of
the rest put together. He taught me these things, and gave me a solid
foundation on which to build. True, he did not cure my stammering. But
that was not because he failed to understand its cause, but merely
because he had not worked out the correct method of removing the cause.
It was this man who first brought home to me the fact that principles
of speech are constant, that they never change and that every person
who talks normally follows out the same principles of speech, while
every person who stutters or stammers violates these principles of
speech. That is the basis of sound procedure for the cure of stammering
and I must acknowledge my indebtedness to this sincere old gentleman
who did so much for me in the way of knowledge, even though he did but
little for me in the way of results.
After leaving Philadelphia, I visited Pittsburgh, Baltimore,
Washington, New York, Boston and other eastern cities, searching for a
cure, but did not find it. I was benefited very little. These
experiences, however, all possessed a certain value, although I did not
know it at the time. They taught me the things which would not work and
by a simple process of elimination I later found the things which would.
Finally, however, having become disgusted with my eastern trip, I
bought a ticket for home and boarded the train more nearly convinced
than ever that I had an incurable case of stammering.
Some time after trying my experiment with the eastern schools, I saw
the advertisement of a professor from Chicago saying that he would be
at Fort Wayne, Indiana, (which was 40 miles from my home), for a week.
He was there. So was I. But to my sorrow. I paid him twenty dollars for
which he taught me a few simple breathing and vocal exercises, most of
which I already knew by heart, having been drilled in them time and
again. This fellow was like so many others who claimed to cure
stammering--he was in the business just because there were stammerers
to cure, and not because he knew anything about it. He treated the
effects of the trouble and did not attempt to remove the cause. The
fact of the matter is, I doubt whether he knew anything about the cause.
Then one Sunday while reading a Cincinnati Sunday newspaper, I ran
across an advertisement of a School of Elocution, in which was the
statement, "Stammering Positively Cured!" Whenever I saw a sign "Vocal
Culture" I became interested, so I clipped the advertisement,
corresponded with the school and not many Sundays later, being able to
secure excursion rates to Cincinnati, I made the trip and prepared to
begin my work.
The cost of the course was only fifty dollars and I thought I would be
getting cured mighty cheap if I succeeded. So I gave this school a
"whirl" with the idea of going hack home in a short time cured--to the
surprise of my family and friends. But I was doomed to disappointment.
I took the twenty lessons, but went home stammering as badly as ever.
You can imagine how I felt as the Big Four train whistled at the Wabash
river just before pulling into the Wabash station, where I was to get
off.
Here was another failure that could be checked up against the
instructor who knew nothing whatever about the cause of stammering. The
whole idea of the course was to cultivate voice and make me an orator.
That was very fine and would, no doubt, have done me a great deal of
good, but it was of no use to try to cultivate a fine voice until I
could use that voice in the normal way. The finest voice in the world
is of no use if you stammer, and cannot use it. The school of elocution
went the same way as all the rest--it was a total failure so far as
curing my stammering was concerned.
By this time, my effort to be cured of stammering had become a habit,
just as eating and sleeping are habits. I was determined to be cured. I
made up my mind I would never give up. True, I often said to myself, "I
may never be cured," but in the same breath I resolved that if I was
not, it could never be said that it was because I was a "quitter."
My next experiment was with a man who claimed he could cure my
stammering in one hour. Think of it. Here I had been, spending weeks
and months trying out just ONE way of cure and here was a man who could
do the whole job IN ONE HOUR. Wonderful power he must possess, I
thought. Of course, I did not believe he could do it. I COULD not
believe it. It was not believable. But nevertheless, in my effort to be
cured, I had resolved to leave no stone unturned. I made up my mind
that the only way to be sure that I was not missing the successful
method was to try them all.
So I put myself under this man's hand. He was a hypnotist. He felt able
to restore speech with a hypnotic sleep and the proper hypnotic
suggestion while I was in the trance. But like all the fake fol-de-rol
with which I had come in contact, he did not even make an impression.
I will say in behalf of this hypnotic stammer doctor, however, that he
was following distinguished precedent in attempting to cure stammering
by hypnotism. German professors in particular have been especially
zealous in following out this line of endeavor and many of them have
written volumes on the subject only to end up with the conclusion (in
their own minds, at least) that it is a failure. Hypnotism may be said
to be a condition where the will of the subject is entirely dormant and
his every act and thought controlled by the mind of the hypnotist. I do
not know, not having been conscious at the time, but it is not
improbable that while in the hypnotic state, I was able to talk without
stammering, since my words were directed by the mind of the professor,
and not my own mind. But inasmuch as I couldn't have the professor
carried around with me through the rest of my lifetime in order to use
his mind, the treatment could not benefit me.
I next got in touch with an honest-looking old man with a beard like
one of the prophets, who assured me with a great deal of professional
dignity, that stammering was a mere trifle for a magnetic healer like
himself and that he could cure it entirely in ten treatments. So I
planked down the specified amount for ten treatments, and went to him
regularly three times a week for almost a month, when he explained to
me, again with a plenitude of professionalism, that my case was a very
peculiar one and that it would require ten more treatments. But I could
not figure out how, if ten treatments had done me no good, ten more
would do any better. So I declined to try his methods any further. Once
again I said to myself, "Well, this has failed, too--I wonder what
next?"
The next happened to be electrical treatments. When I visited the
electrical treatment specialist, he explained to me in a very effective
manner just how (according to his views) stammering was caused by
certain contractions of the muscles of the vocal organs, etc., and told
me that his treatment surely was the thing to eliminate this
contraction and leave my speech entirely free from stammering. I knew
something about my stammering then, but not a great deal--consequently
his explanation sounded plausible to me and appealed to me as being
very sensible and so I decided to give it a trial. I was glad after it
was over that I had received no bad effects--that was ALL the cause I
had to be glad, for he had not changed my stammering one iota, nor had
he changed my speech in any way to make it easier for me to talk. Thus,
had I found another one of the things that will not work and chalked up
another failure against my attempts to be cured of stammering.
By this time, the reader may well wonder why I was not discouraged in
my efforts to be cured. Well, who will say that I was not? I believe I
was--as far as it was possible for me to be discouraged at that time.
But despite all my failures, I had made up my mind never to give up
until I was cured of stammering. I set myself doggedly to the task of
ridding myself of an impediment that I knew would always hold me down
and prevent any measure of success. I stayed with this task. I never
gave up. I kept this one thing always hi mind. It was a life job with
me if necessary--and I was not a "quitter." So failures and
discouragements simply steeled me to more intense endeavors to be
cured. And while these endeavors cost my parents many hundreds of
dollars and cost me many years of time, still, I feel today that they
were worth while--not worth while enough to go through again, or worth
while enough to recommend to any one else--but at least not a total
loss to me.
CHAPTER VI
I REFUSE TO BE DISCOURAGED
After I had tried the electric treatment and found it wanting, I heard
of a clairvoyant who could, by looking at a person, tell his name, age,
occupation, place of residence, etc., and could cure all diseases and
afflictions including stammering. So I thought I would give him a
trial. He claimed to work through a "greater power"--whatever that
was--and so I paid him his fee to see the "greater power" work--and to
be cured of stammering, as per promise. But there was nothing doing in
the line of a cure--all I got in trying to be cured, was another
chapter added to my book of experience.
Following this experience, I tried an osteopath, whose methods, however
good they might have been, affected merely the physical organs and
could not hope to reach the real cause of my trouble. I do not doubt
that this man was entirely sincere in explaining his own science to me
in a way that led me to build up hopes of relief from that method. He
simply did not understand stammering and its causes and was therefore
not prepared to treat it.
I was told of another doctor who claimed to be able to cure stammering.
When I called to see him, he had me wait in his reception room for
nearly two hours, for the purpose, I presume, of giving me the
impression that he was a very busy man. Then he called me into his
private consultation room, where he apparently had all of the modern
and up-to-date surgical instruments. He put me through a thorough
examination, after which he said that the only thing to cure me was a
surgical operation to have my tonsils removed. I was not willing to
consent to the use of the knife, so therefore the operation was never
performed.
Since that time, however, the practice of operating on children
especially for the removal of adenoids and tonsils has become very
popular and quite frequently this is the remedy prescribed for various
and sundry ailments of childhood. In no case must a parent expect to
eradicate stuttering or stammering by the removal of the tonsils. The
operation, beneficial as it may be in other ways, does not prevent the
child from stammering--for the operation does not remove the cause of
the stammering--that cause is mental, not physical.
CHAPTER VII
THE BENEFIT OF MANY FAILURES
I had now tried upwards of fifteen different methods for the cure of my
stammering. I had tried the physician; the surgeon; the elocution
teacher; the hypnotic specialist; the osteopath; a clairvoyant; a
mail-order scheme; the world's greatest speech specialist--so-called,
and several other things. My parents had spent hundreds of dollars of
money trying to have me cured. They had spared no effort, stopped at no
cost. And yet I now stammered worse than I had ever stammered before.
Everything I had tried had been a worthless failure. Nothing had been
of the least permanent good to me. My money was gone, months of time
had been wasted and I now began to wonder if I had not been very
foolish indeed, in going to first one man and then another, trying to
be cured. "Wouldn't it have been better," I asked, "if I had resigned
myself to a life as a stammerer and let it go at that?"
My father before me stammered. So did my grandfather and no less than
fourteen of my blood relations. My affliction was inherited and
therefore supposedly incurable. At least so I was told by honest
physicians and other scientific observers who believed what they said
and who had no desire to make any personal gain by trafficking in my
infirmity. These men told me frankly that their skill and knowledge
held out no hope for me and advised me from the very beginning to save
my money and avoid the pitfalls of the many who would profess to be
able to cure me.
But I had disregarded this honest advice, sincerely given, had spent my
money and my time--and what had I gotten? Would I not have been better
off if I had listened to the advice and stayed at home? Everything
seemed to answer "Yes," but down in my heart I felt that things were
better as they were. Certainly some good must come of all this
effort--surely it could not all be wasted.
"But yet," I argued with myself, "what good can come of it?" Stammering
was fast ruining my life. It had already taken the joy out of my
childhood and had made school a task almost too heavy to be undertaken.
It had marked my youth with a somber melancholy, and now that youth was
slipping away from me with no hope that the future held anything better
for me than the past. Something had to be done. I was overpowered by
that thought--something had to be done. It had to be done at once. I
had come to the turning point in my life. Like Hamlet, I found myself
repeating over and over again,
"To be or not to be,
That is the question."
Was I discouraged? No, I will not admit that I was discouraged, but I
was pretty nearly resigned to a life without fluent speech, nearly
convinced that future efforts to find a cure for stammering would be
fruitless and bring no better results.
It was about this time that I stepped into the office of my cousin,
then a successful lawyer and district attorney of his city, later the
first vice-president of one of the great American railroads with
headquarters in New York, and now retired. He was one of those men in
whose vocabulary there is no such word as "fail." After I had talked
with him for quite a while, he looked at me, and with his kindly,
almost fatherly smile asked, "Why don't you cure yourself?"
"Cure myself?" I queried. "How do you expect me, a young man with no
scientific training, to cure myself, when the learned doctors, surgeons
and scientists of the country hare given me up as incurable?"
"That doesn't make any difference," he replied, "'while there is life,
there is hope' and it's a sure thing that nobody ever accomplished
anything worth while by accepting the failures of others as proof that
the thing couldn't be done. Whitney would never have invented the
cotton gin if he had accepted the failures of others as final. Columbus
picked out a road to America and assured the skeptics that there was no
danger of his sailing 'over the edge.' Of course, it had never been
done before, but then Columbus went ahead and did it himself. He didn't
take somebody else's failure as an indication of what he could do. If
he had, a couple of hundred years later, somebody else would have
discovered it and put Columbus in the class with the rest of the
weak-kneed who said it couldn't BE done, just because IT NEVER HAD BEEN
DONE.
"The progress of this country, Ben," continued my cousin, "is founded
on the determination of men who refuse to accept the failures of others
as proof that things can't be done at all. Now you've got a mighty good
start. You've found out all about these other methods--you know that
they have failed--and in a lot of cases, you know WHY they have failed.
Now, why don't you begin where they have left off and find out how to
succeed?"
The thought struck me like a bolt from a clear sky: "BEGIN WHERE THE
OTHERS LEAVE OFF AND FIND OUT HOW TO SUCCEED!" I kept saying it over
and over to myself, "Begin where the others leave off--begin where the
others leave off!"
This thought put high hope in my heart. It seemed to ring like a call
from afar. "Begin where the others leave off and find out how to
succeed." I kept thinking about that all the way home. I thought of it
at the table that evening. I said nothing. I went to bed--but I didn't
go to sleep, for singing through my brain was that sentence, "Begin
where the others leave off and find out how to succeed!"
Right then and there I made the resolve that resulted in my curing
myself. "I WILL do it," I said, "I will begin where the others leave
off--and I WILL SUCCEED!!" Then and there I determined to master the
principles of speech, to chart the methods that had been used by
others, to find their defects, to locate the cause of stammering, to
find out how to remove that cause and remove it from myself, so that I,
like the others whom I so envied, could talk freely and fluently.
That resolution--that determination which first fired me that evening
never left me. It marked the turning point in my whole life. I was no
longer dependent upon others, no longer looking to physicians or
elocution teachers or hypnotists to cure me of stammering. I was
looking to myself. If I was to be cured, then I must be the one to do
it. This responsibility sobered me. It intensified my determination. It
emphasized in my own mind the need for persistent effort, for a
constant striving toward this one thing. And absorbed with this idea,
living and working toward this one end, I began my work.
CHAPTER VIII
BEGINNING WHERE OTHERS HAD LEFT OFF
From the moment that my resolution took shape, my plans were all laid
with one thing in mind--to cure myself of stammering. I determined,
first of all, to master the principles of speech. I remembered very
well, indeed, the admonition of Prof. J. J. Mills, President of Earlham
College, on the day I left the institution. "You have been a
hard-working student," he said, "but your success will never be
complete until you learn to talk as others talk. Cure your stammering
at any cost." That was the thing I had determined to do. And having
determined upon that course, I resolved to let nothing swerve me from
it.
I began the study of anatomy. I studied the lungs, the throat, the
brain--nothing escaped me. I pursued my studies with the avidity of the
medical student wrapped up in his work. I read all the books that had
been published on the subject of stammering. I sought eagerly for
translations of foreign books on the subject. I lived in the libraries.
I studied late at night and arose early in the morning, that I might be
at my work again. It absorbed me. I thought of the subject by day and
dreamed of it by night. It was never out of my mind. I was living it,
breathing it, eating it. I had not thought myself capable of such
concentration as I was putting in on the pursuit of the truth as
regards stammering and its cure.
With the knowledge that I had gained from celebrated physicians,
specialists and institutions throughout this country and Europe, I
extended my experiments and investigation. I had an excellent subject
on which to experiment--myself. Progress was slow at first--so slow, in
fact, that I did not realize until later that it was progress at all.
Nothing but my past misery, backed up by my present determination to be
free from the impediment that hampered me at every turn, could have
kept me from giving up. But at last, after years of effort, after long
nights of study and days of research, I was rewarded by success--I
found and perfected a method of control of the articulatory organs as
well as of the brain centers controlling the organs of speech. I had
learned the cause of stammering and stuttering.
All of the mystery with which the subject had been surrounded by
so-called specialists, fell away. In all its clearness, I saw the
truth. I saw how the others, who had failed in my case, had failed
because of ignorance. I saw that they had been treating effects, not
causes. I saw exactly WHY their methods had not succeeded and could
never succeed.
In truth I had BEGUN WHERE THE OTHERS LEFT OFF AND WON SUCCESS. The
reader can imagine what this meant to me. It meant that at last I could
speak--clearly, distinctly, freely, and fluently, without those facial
contortions that had made me an object of ridicule wherever I went. It
meant that I could take my place in life, a man among men; that I could
look the whole world in the face; that I could live and enjoy life as
other normal persons lived and enjoyed it.
At first my friends could not believe that my cure was permanent. Even
my mother doubted the evidence of her own ears. But I knew the trouble
would not come back, for the old fear was gone, the nervousness soon
passed away, and a new feeling of confidence and self-reliance took
hold of me, with the result that in a few weeks I was a changed man.
People who had formerly avoided me because of my infirmity began to
greet me with new interest. Gradually the old affliction was forgotten
by those with whom I came into daily contact and by many I was thought
of as a man who had never stammered. Even today, those who knew me when
I stammered so badly I could hardly talk, are hardly able to believe
that I am the same person who used to be known as "BEN BOGUE'S BOY WHO
STUTTERS."
For today I can talk as freely and fluently as anybody. I do not
hesitate in the least. For years, I have not even known what it is to
grope mentally for a word. I speak in public as well as in private
conversation. I have no difficulty in talking over the telephone and in
fact do not know the difference. In my work, I lecture to students and
am invited to address scientific bodies, societies and educational
gatherings, all of which I can accomplish without the slightest
difficulty.
Today, I can say with Terence, "I am a man and nothing that is human is
alien to me." And I can go a step further and say to those who are
afflicted as I was afflicted: "I have been a stammerer. I know your
troubles, your sorrows, your discouragements. I understand with an
understanding born of a costly experience."
Man or woman, boy or girl, wherever you are, my heart goes out to you.
Whatever your station in life, rich or poor, educated or unlettered,
discouraged and hopeless, or determined and resolute, I send you a
message of hope, a message which, in the words of Dr. Russell R.
Conwell, "has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the thousands of lives I
have been privileged to watch. And the message is this: Neither
heredity nor environment nor any obstacles superimposed by man can keep
you from marching straight through to a cure, provided you are guided
by a firm driving determination and have normal health and
intelligence." To that end I commend to you the succeeding pages of
this volume, where you will find in plain and simple language the
things which I have spent more than thirty years in learning. May these
pages open for you the door to freedom of speech--as they have opened
it for hundreds before you.
PART II
STAMMERING AND STUTTERING
The Causes, Peculiarities, Tendencies and Effects
CHAPTER I
SPEECH DISORDERS DEFINED
In the diagnosis of speech disorders, there are almost as many
different forms of defective utterance as there are cases, all of which
forms, however, divide themselves into a few basic types. These various
disorders might be broadly classified into three classes:
(1)--Those resulting from carelessness in learning to speak;
(2)--Those which are of distinct mental form; and
(3)--Those caused by a physical deformity in the organs of
speech themselves.
Regardless of under which of these three heads a speech disorder may
come, it is commonly spoken of by the laymen as a "speech impediment"
or "a stoppage in speech" notwithstanding the fact that the
characteristics of the various disorders are quite dissimilar. In
certain of the disorders,
(a)--There is an inability to release a word; in others,
(b)--A tendency to repeat a syllable several times before
the following syllable can be uttered; in others,
(c)--The tendency to substitute an incorrect sound for the
correct one; while in others,
(d)--The utterance is defective merely in the imperfect
enunciation of sounds and syllables due to some organic
defect, or to carelessness in learning to speak.
While this volume has but little to do with speech disorders other than
stammering and stuttering, the characteristics of the more common forms
of speech impediment--lisping, cluttering and hesitation, as well as
stuttering and stammering--will be discussed in this first chapter, in
order that the reader may be able, in a general way at least, to
differentiate between the various disorders.
LISPING
This is a very common form of speech disorder and one which manifests
itself early in the life of the child. Lisping may be divided into
three forms:
(1)--Negligent Lisping
(2)--Neurotic Lisping
(3)--Organic Lisping
NEGLIGENT LISPING: This is a form of defective enunciation caused in
most cases by parental neglect or the carelessness of the child himself
in the pronunciation of words during the first few months of talking.
This defective pronunciation in Negligent Lisping is caused either by a
FAILURE or an INABILITY to observe others who speak correctly. We learn
to speak by imitation, and failing to observe the correct method of
speaking in others, we naturally fail to speak correctly ourselves. In
Negligent Lisping, this inability properly to imitate correct speech
processes, results in the substitution of an incorrect sound for the
correct one with consequent faulty formation of words.
ORGANIC LISPING: This results from an organic or physical defect in the
vocal organs, such as hare-lip, feeble lip, malformation of the tongue,
defective teeth, overshot or undershot jaw, high palatal arch, cleft
palate, defective palate, relaxed palate following an operation for
adenoids, obstructed nasal passages or defective hearing.
NEUROTIC LISPING: This is a form of speech marked by short, rapid
muscular contractions instead of the smooth and easy action used in
producing normal sounds. Neurotic Lisping is often found to be combined
with stammering or stuttering, which is quite logical, since it is
similar, both as to CAUSE and as to the presence of a MENTAL
DISTURBANCE. In Neurotic Lisping, the muscular movements are less
spasmodic than in cases of stuttering, partaking more of the cramped
sticking movement, common in stammering.
STUTTERING
Stuttering may be generally defined as the repetition--rapid in some
cases, slow in others--of a word or a syllable, before the following
word or syllable can be uttered. Stuttering may take several forms, any
one of which will fall into one of four phases:
(1)--Simple Phase
(2)--Advanced Phase
(3)--Mental Phase
(4)--Compound Phase
Simple stuttering can be said to be a purely physical form of the
difficulty. The Advanced Phase marks the stage of further progress
where the trouble passes from the purely physical state into a
condition that may be known as Mental-Physical. The distinctly Mental
Phase is marked by symptoms indicating a mental cause for the trouble,
the disorder usually having passed into this form from the simple or
advanced stages of the malady. Stuttering may be combined with
stammering in which case the condition represents the Compound Phase of
the trouble.
CHOREATIC STUTTERING: This originates in an attack of Acute Chorea or
St. Vitus Dance, which leaves the sufferer in a condition where
involuntary and spasmodic muscular contractions, especially of the
face, have become an established habit. This breaks up the speech in a
manner somewhat similar to ordinary stuttering. Also known as "Tic
Speech."
SPASTIC SPEECH: This is often the result of infantile cerebral palsy,
the characteristic symptom of the trouble being intense over-exertion,
continued throughout a sentence, the syllables being equal in length
and very laboriously enunciated. In spastic speech, there is present a
noticeable hyper-tonicity of the nerve fibers actuating the muscles
used in speaking as well as marked contractions of the facial muscles.
UNCONSCIOUS STUTTERING: This is a misnomer because there can be no such
thing as unconscious stuttering. It appears that the person afflicted
is not conscious of his difficulty for he insists that he does not
s-s-s-s-tut-tut-tut-ter. Unconscious Stuttering is but a name for the
disorder of a stutterer who is too stubborn to admit his own difficulty.
THOUGHT STUTTERING: This is an advanced form of stuttering which is
also known as Aphasia and which is caused by the inability of the
sufferer to recall the mental images necessary to the formation of a
word. Stuttering in its simpler forms is usually connected with the
period of childhood, while aphasia is often connected with old age or
injury. The aphasic person is excessively nervous as is the stutterer;
he undergoes the same anxiety to get his words out and the same fear of
being ridiculous. In aphasia there is, however, no excessive muscular
tension or cramp of the speech muscles. In these cases, the stutterer
will sometimes repeat the first syllable ten or fifteen times with
pauses between, being for a time unable to recall what the second
syllable is. It is, in other words, a habitual, but nevertheless
temporary, inability to recall to mind the mental images necessary to
produce the word or syllable desired to be spoken. This condition is
more commonly known as Thought Lapse or the inability to think of what
you desire to say.
One investigator shows that the diagnosis of "insanity" with later
commitment to an asylum occurred in the case of a bad stutterer. When
excited he would go through the most extreme contortions and the
wildest gesticulations in a vain attempt to finally get all of the word
out, finally pacing up and down the room like one truly insane. This
tendency to believe that the stutterer is insane because of the
convulsive or spasmodic effort accompanying his efforts to speak, is a
mistaken one, although there can be little doubt of the tendency of
this condition finally to lead to insanity if not checked.
HESITATION
Hesitation is marked by a silent, choking effort, often accompanied by
a fruitless opening and closing of the mouth. Hesitation is a stage
through which the sufferer usually passes before he reaches the
condition known as Elementary Stammering.
STAMMERING
Stammering is a condition in which the person afflicted is unable to
begin a word or a sentence no matter how much effort may be directed
toward the attempt to speak, or how well they may know what they wish
to say. In stammering, there is the "sticking" as the stammerer terms
it, or the inability to express a sound. The difference between
stammering and stuttering lies in the fact that in stuttering, the
disorder manifests itself in loose and hurried (or in some cases, slow)
repetitions of sounds, syllables or words, while in the case of
stammering, the manifestation takes the form of an inability to express
a sound, or to begin a word or a sentence.
ELEMENTARY STAMMERING: This is the simplest form of this disorder.
Here, the convulsive effort is not especially noticeable and the marked
results of long-continued stammering are not apparent. Most cases pass
quickly from the elementary stage unless checked in their incipiency.
SPASMODIC STAMMERING: This marks the stage of the disorder where the
effort to speak brings about marked muscular contractions and
pronounced spasmodic efforts, resulting in all sorts of facial
contortions, grimaces and uncontrolled jerkings of the head, body and
limbs.
THOUGHT STAMMERING: This, like Thought-Stuttering, is a form of Aphasia
and manifests itself in the inability of the stammerer to think of what
he wishes to say. In other words, the thought-stammerer, like the
thought-stutterer, is unable to recall the mental images necessary to
the production of a certain word or sound--and is, therefore, unable to
produce sounds correctly. The manifestations described under Thought
Stuttering are present in Thought Stammering also.
COMBINED STAMMERING AND STUTTERING: This is a compound form of
difficulty in which the sufferer finds himself at times not only unable
to utter a sound or begin a word or a sentence but also is found to
repeat a sound or syllable several times before the following syllable
can be uttered. Any case of stuttering or stammering in the Simple or
Elementary Stages may pass into Combined Stammering and Stuttering
without warning or without the knowledge, even, of the stammerer or
stutterer.