Stammering, Its Cause and Cure | Page 6

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