Stammering, Its Cause and Cure | Page 4

Be Cured VI. I Refuse to Be Discouraged VII. The Benefit of Many Failures VIII. Beginning Where Others Had Left Off
PAST 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