Stammering, Its Cause and Cure - Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue (short books for teens .TXT) 📗

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.