MEDICAL TALK
THE CURE FOR STUTTERING

HISTORY is rather sparing of famous stutterers; however, it does present us with a few who are not among the least illustrious.
Demosthenes, the most famous of Athenian orators, had to correct his pronunciation defect by undertaking a stubborn struggle against himself; he recited speeches with his mouth full of small pebbles, he went to the seaside to oppose his declamation to the roar of the waves, in order to accustom himself, he said, to the storms of popular assemblies.
Two kings of France were also stutterers: Louis II, called the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald, and Louis XIII, called the Just, son of Henry IV. Here is an anecdote about the latter. Louis XIII brought to the court a Mr. d'Alamont, Lord of Molandry, who was a stutterer like the king. Now, the first time he saw the gentleman, Louis XIII spoke to him with a stammer as was his custom, and M. d'Alamont, not wishing to express himself like a simple commoner, answered him with the most amiable stammer. The king, stung by what he regarded as a mockery and a serious insult, was about to give the order to arrest the bad joker, when it was explained to him that the knight was afflicted with the same defect as himself. According to statistics from the Ministry of Public Instruction, there are 150,000 stutterers in France. Stuttering begins around the age of three; at seven, it becomes apparent, and around twelve it is complete. The causes that provoke it are multiple, but in first place we must note fears and moral shocks; secondly, acute illnesses, nervous diseases (St. Vitus' dance, epilepsy), adenoids of the nasopharynx, hypertrophy of the tonsils, excessive length of the uvula must be blamed.
Stuttering only occurs on a special psychic terrain, which makes the stutterer want to speak his thought before thinking his word, in other words, he wants to put external speech before internal speech. Under the influence of any emotion, the thought that was beginning to shine suddenly disappears. Thus, Dr. S., from Paris, who was a stutterer, relates that one day, wanting to take the train to Perpignan, he arrived very late at the station and went to the ticket office out of breath to get his ticket, but he remained speechless in front of the employee and, with great contortions and incredible efforts, ended up answering "This"... when he intended to ask for a ticket to Perpignan!
Professor R., from Paris, relates that one day he caused a small crowd to gather at a ticket office at the Gare du Nord asking for a ticket to Babeuf station; he was unable to pronounce this word beginning with an explosive; faced with the impatience of the public, who demonstrated noisily as a result of his prolonged stop at the ticket office, he had to resolve to write Babeuf's name on a piece of paper and give it to the ticket collector to get a ticket, thus passing for a deaf-mute.
This same professor explained, in amusing terms and with charming modesty, how he managed, with the help of the late Dr. Chervin, to cure himself of his infirmity: "I began," he said, "the cure by making a commitment of honor to keep absolute silence during the first week of treatment and not to utter a single word outside of the common exercises that took place at Dr. Chervin's home. This was the hardest stage of the treatment. I corresponded with my family only in writing. If someone approached me in the street and wanted to talk to me, I would take a card from my wallet on which were written these words: "Following treatment for stuttering, I am obliged to be mute for eight days." One of my clients met me one day and thought I had gone mad. "The common exercises lasted four hours a day, two in the morning, two in the evening. They applied themselves to complete speech rehabilitation. The first week, I learned to breathe, to reposition my voice, to make linked sounds, to perform lip gymnastics, to say vowels and consonants, to pronounce a few words extremely slowly.

"During the second week the use of speech was restored to me, but I had to speak only very slowly and by syllabifying each word. This often gave rise to laughter around me. I continued the common exercises during the four hours of daily lessons and, outside of lessons, for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. This second week, in which one gets used to a new language, demands as much attention and willpower as the first. If one wants to succeed, one must start over mercilessly every sentence that is not absolutely correct. During the third week, I abandoned the syllabification of words and learned to cut sentences and to inflect the voice.
"The treatment itself was finished at the end of the fourth week, but the convalescence lasted a year. For two months, I had to do three hours of exercise a day, and for a year I did another hour a day, half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening.
"At the beginning of my convalescence, to give myself courage, I resorted to the following test: I stopped passers-by in the street and asked them for information. I no longer stuttered; I was satisfied." Here are some details on the exercises to which Professor Louis R. refers. The stutterer must, after deep inspiration, wait a moment for the air to store itself in the lungs; then, he will give up this air little by little and will exhale very slowly while pronouncing the vowel; the air must be renewed, before the chest is empty, each time that the sense of speech allows it. At the beginning of the treatment, the stutterer must beat time by articulating the words, so that each syllable is like a sound of music. There are stutterers who cannot speak because of spasms, contractions of the lips; These will hold the tongue towards the roof of the palate, pronouncing the following letters, which accustom the lips to stretch back: a, e, i; then the letters o, e, u, which make the lips pucker. To these vowels, and after a few sessions, they will successively add the consonants b, r, t, k, that is to say they will pronounce ba, bé, bi, puis, pa, pé, pi, etc. We will not stop at the monotony of the syllables and we will repeat them often and for a long time.
When, after the syllabic exercises, we begin to practice sentences, we must always prolong a little the syllable which begins the expiration. When the stutterer encounters a difficult syllable, let him not persist in continuing the sentence, he will not succeed in it despite all the grimaces; he must stop for a moment, take a deep breath, wait a moment, bring his tongue to the roof of his mouth, at the top, and then he will pronounce with astonishing ease.
Even in normal people, articulate language is acquired by exercise. Man is an imitative animal whose faculties and character are formed as one molds his brain.
Tell anyone to pronounce, without him knowing them, these famous phrases which, I add, are not so unknown as that: "Your tea has taken away your cough?" or "Dido dined, they say, on the back of a plump turkey." He will not be able to do it right away, but a little practice will be enough for him to pronounce them quickly.

THE DOCTOR.