STAMMERING AND DEFECTIVE SPEECH. Stammering is an affection of the vocal and enunciative organs, causing a hesitancy and difficulty of utterance, and respecting the nature and the origin of which a variety of different opinions has been entertained. Stammerers themselves often attribute the varying conditions of their impediment to causes which must be purely imaginary, such as the state of the wind, the changes of the moon, etc. There can be no doubt that the impediment is aggravated of spirits, derangement of the digestive organs, physical debility, etc.; but these influences have nothing to do with the primary cause of the infirmity. A nervous dread of speaking is usually associated with stammering; hut this is rather the result than the cause of the impediment. If constitutional nervousness were productive of stammering, the number of sufferers would be vastly greater, and it would include a larger proportion of females than of males; whereas the robust sex furnishes by far the greater number of cases; and it is noticeable, besides, that stammerers are not in general persons of weak nerves, otherwise than in connection with the act of speaking. Any physical defect will render a person nervous when the peculiarity is made a subject of observation, and itsis in this way only that nervousness is associated with speech in cases of statnmerin,g. The strength of this impediment lies in habit, in mismanagement of the breath and tlic organs of utterance, rendered habitual before the development of reason and observation; and the removal of the defect depends on•the acquirement of voluntary control over the mechanical of speech. The nervousness which unfits the stammerer for self direction gradually subside, as his will attains a mastery over the processes of speech; and perseverance in a discipline of systematic and guarded utterance rarely fails to remove the impediment, and the fear width accompanied it.
The first manifestations of stammering Usually take place during the weakness attendant on disease, Sr after a fall or sudden fright; but sometimes the impediment appears to arise from imitation, and children have been known to be infected by even the most casual example. Thus, when one member or visitor of a familv stammers, the
younger members of a family are very apt to be similarly affected. From this cause defects of speech ruin so much in families, that many persons have thought them to be hereditarily transmitted. This, however, is altogether a mistake. In the early stages, a little patient direction on the part of parents and nurses would suffice to cheek the tendency to stammer, and prevent the formation of the unfortunate habit.
Stammering generally begins about the fourth or fifth year of age; but harshness in checking children, or impatience in connection with messages or lessons. may induce the at a considerable later period. Boys of ten or eleven years of age have been excited into the habit by injudicious hurry and peremptoriness at school. The little stammerer, when he cannot be more directly assisted, should be kindly counseled to take time and speak slowly. and he should by no means be ridiculed or reproved for what he cannot help. and is not taught how to avoid.
The varieties of stammering are so great, that cases are found precisely alike. In some there is but little outward manifestation of circa t; in others, the futile attempts are painfully demonstrative. The silent straining to speak causes the eyeballs to protrude, and the veins of the faCe and neck to swell. till relief from apparent chok ing comes in fitful, ungovernable bursts of sound. In almost all cases the head oscillates loosely on the neck. and is forced upward by the misdirected current of breath; while the larynx, the organ of sound, is from the same cause agitated in continual efforts to ascend. and the voice is consequently abrupt and intermittent, and unnaturally acute. The muscles of the face participate in the general upward action, and sometimes the spasmodic contortions extend over the whole body, causing the stammerer to rock in his chair, or start wildly to his feet. These muscular disturbances arise simply from dis ordered respiration, and they disappear when the habit of closing the glottis and compressing the organs of articulation is overcome, and the air is allowed to pass freely in or out of the lungs.