STAMMERING, or STUTTERING, an infirmity of speech, the result of fail ure in co-ordinate action of certain muscles and their appropriate nerves. It is analogous to some kinds of lameness, to cramp or spasm, or partial paralysis of the arms, wrists, hands, and fingers, occasionally suffered by violinists, pian ists, and swordsmen; to the scrivener's palsy, or writer's cramp, of men who write much.
Stammering may be hereditary, and it may be acquired by imitation. It may be the result of mental strain or shock. Fever may bring it on, epilepsy, hysteria, and nervous affection, temporary failure of health, any excitement, soreness of the mouth. It rarely shows itself earlier than at 4 or 5 years of age. It usually begins in youth, but may be produced at any later age.
Stammering occurs in the mouth, the organ of articulation. Its proximate cause is always in the larynx, the organ of voice. Sometimes the lungs, the organ of breathing, complicate the uncertainty and unsteadiness of the vocal cords and the vocal chink in the larynx.
Stammering can be cured. It often disappears gradually without effort at cure. Improvement generally takes place as age advances. In some cases resolute endeavor is demanded. A wav ing motion of the arms, time kept to a baton, were favored as cures at one time. They were on the lines of the musical methods of cure—intoning, chanting, singing—which were based on the fact that most stammerers can sing. These brief instructions should be tried. Regulate the breath. Work for a habitual use of the chest voice—i. e. for deeper, steadier vibration of the vocal chords—because people generally stam mer in a head voice. Take exercise, in a chest voice, on the sound (seldom vowels) at which a stumble is apt to be made. Special attention should be paid to possible eye-strain, difficult nasal breathing, adenoid growths, and diseased tonsils.