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Stammering, Its Cause and Cure

B >> Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue >> Stammering, Its Cause and Cure



STAMMERING

ITS CAUSE AND CURE

BY BENJAMIN NATHANIEL BOGUE

A Chronic Stammerer for Almost Twenty Years; Originator of the
Bogue Unit Method of Restoring Perfect Speech; Founder of the
Bogue Institute for Stammerers and Editor of the "Emancipator," a
magazine devoted to the Interests of Perfect Speech





TO MY MOTHER

That wonderful woman whose unflagging courage held me to a task
that I never could have completed alone and who when all others
failed, stood by me, encouraged me and pointed out the heights
where lay success--this volume is dedicated





CONTENTS

Preface

PART I--MY LIFE AS A STAMMERER

I. Starting Life Under a Handicap
II. My First Attempt to Be Cured
III. My Search Continues
IV. A Stammerer Hunts a Job
V. Further Futile Attempts to Be Cured
VI. I Refuse to Be Discouraged
VII. The Benefit of Many Failures
VIII. Beginning Where Others Had Left Off


PAST II--STAMMERING AND STUTTERING

The Causes, Peculiarities, Tendencies and Effects

I. Speech Disorders Defined
II. The Causes of Stuttering and Stammering
III. The Peculiarities of Stuttering and Stammering
IV. The Intermittent Tendency
V. The Progressive Tendency
VI. Can Stammering and Stuttering Be Outgrown?
VII. The Effect on the Mind
VIII. The Effect on the Body
IX. Defective Speech in Children, (1) The Pre-Speaking Period
X. Defective Speech in Children, (2) The Formative Period
XI. Defective Speech in Children, (3) The Speech-Setting Period
XII. The Speech Disorders of Youth
XIII. Where Does Stammering Lead?


PART III--THE CURE OF STAMMERING AND STUTTERING

I. Can Stammering Really Be Cured?
II. Cases That "Cure Themselves"
III. Cases That Cannot Be Cured
IV. Can Stammering Be Cured by Mail?
V. The Importance of Expert Diagnosis
VI. The Secret of Curing Stuttering and Stammering
VII. The Bogue Unit Method Described
VIII. Some Cases I Have Met


PART IV--SETTING THE TONGUE FREE

I. The Joy of Perfect Speech
II. How to Determine Whether You Can Be Cured
III. The Bogue Guarantee and What It Means
IV. The Cure Is Permanent
V. A Priceless Gift--An Everlasting Investment
VI. The Home of Perfect Speech
VII. My Mother and The Home Life at the Institute
VIII. A Heart-to-Heart Talk with Parents
IX. The Dangers of Delay





PREFACE


Considerably more than a third of a century has elapsed since I
purchased my first book on stammering. I still have that quaint
little book made up in its typically English style with small
pages, small type and yellow paper back--the work of an English
author whose obtuse and half-baked theories certainly lent no
clarity to the stammerer's understanding of his trouble. Since
that first purchase my library of books on stammering has grown
until it is perhaps the largest individual collection in the
world. I have read these books--many of them several times,
pondered over the obscurities in some, smiled at the absurdities
in others and benefited by the truths in a few. Yet, with all
their profound explanations of theories and their verbose defense
of hopelessly unscientific methods, the stammerer would be
disappointed indeed, should he attempt to find in the entire
collection a practical and understandable discussion of his
trouble.

This insufficiency of existing books on stammering has encouraged
me to bring out the present volume. It is needed. I know this--
because I spent almost twenty years of my life in a well-nigh
futile search for the very knowledge herein revealed. I haunted
the libraries, was a familiar figure in book stores and a frequent
visitor to the second-hand dealer. Yet these efforts brought me
comparatively little--not one-tenth the information that this book
contains.

Perhaps it is but a colossal conceit that prompts me to offer this
volume to those who stutter and stammer as I did. Yet, I cannot
but believe that almost twenty years' personal experience as a
stammerer plus more than twenty-eight years' experience in curing
speech disorders has supplied me with an intensely practical,
valuable and worth-while knowledge on which to base this book.

After having stammered for twenty years you have pretty well run
the whole gamut of mockery, humiliation and failure. You
understand the stammerer's feelings, his mental processes and his
peculiarities.

And when you add to this more than a quarter of a century, every
waking hour of which has been spent in alleviating the stammerer's
difficulty--and successfully, too--you have a ground-work of
first-hand information that tends toward facts instead of fiction
and toward practice instead of theory.

These are my qualifications.

I have spent a life-time in studying stammering, stuttering and
kindred speech defects. I have written this book out of the
fullness of that experience--I might almost say out of my daily
work. I have made no attempt at literary style or rhetorical
excellence and while the work may be homely in expression the
information it contains is definite and positive--and what is more
important--it is authoritative.

I hope the reader will find the book useful--yes, and helpful. I
hope he will find in it the way to Freedom of Speech--his
birthright and the birthright of every man.

BENJAMIN NATHANIEL BOGUE

Indianapolis September, 1929





STAMMERING Its Cause and Cure





PART I

MY LIFE AS A STAMMERER





CHAPTER I

STARTING LIFE UNDER A HANDICAP


I was laughed at for nearly twenty years because I stammered. I
found school a burden, college a practical impossibility and life
a misery because of my affliction.

I was born in Wabash county, Indiana, and as far back as I can
remember, there was never a time when I did not stammer or
stutter. So far as I know, the halting utterance came with the
first word I spoke and for almost twenty years this difficulty
continued to dog me relentlessly.

When six years of age, I went to the little school house down the
road, little realizing what I was to go through with there before
I left.

Previous to the time I entered school, those around me were my
family, my relatives and my friends--people who were very kind and
considerate, who never spoke of my difficulty in my presence, and
certainly never laughed at me.

At school, it was quite another matter. It was fun for the other
boys to hear me speak and it was common pastime with them to get
me to talk whenever possible. They would jibe and jeer--and then
ask, "What did you say? Why don't you learn to talk English?"
Their best entertainment was to tease and mock me until I became
angry, taunt me when I did, and ridicule me at every turn.

It was not only in the school yard and going to and from school
that I suffered--but also in class. When I got up to recite, what
a spectacle I made, hesitating over every other word, stumbling
along, gasping for breath, waiting while speech returned to me.
And how they laughed at me--for then I was helpless to defend
myself. True, my teachers tried to be kind to me, but that did not
make me talk normally like other children, nor did it always
prevent the others from laughing at me.

The reader can imagine my state of mind during these school days.
I fairly hated even to start to school in the morning--not because
I disliked to go to school, but because I was sure to meet some of
my taunting comrades, sure to be humiliated and laughed at because
I stammered. And having reached the school room I had to face the
prospect of failing every time I stood up on my feet and tried to
recite.

There were four things I looked forward to with positive dread--
the trip to school, the recitations in class, recess in the school
yard and the trip home again. It makes me shudder even now to
think of those days--the dread with which I left that home of mine
every school day morning, the nervous strain, the torment and
torture, and the constant fear of failure which never left me.
Imagine my thoughts as I left parents and friends to face the
ribald laughter of those who did not understand. I asked myself:
"Well, what new disgrace today? Whom will I meet this morning?
What will the teacher say when I stumble? How shall I get through
recess? What is the easiest way home?"

These and a hundred other questions, born of nervousness and fear,
I asked myself morning after morning. And day after day, as the
hours dragged by, I would wonder, "Will this day NEVER end? Will I
NEVER get out of this?"

Such was my life in school. And such is the daily life of
thousands of boys and hundreds of girls--a life of dread, of
constant fear, of endless worry and unceasing nervousness.

But, as I look back at the boys and girls who helped to make life
miserable for me in school, I feel for them only kindness. I bear
no malice. They did no more than their fathers and mothers, many
of them, would have done. They little realized what they were
doing. They had no intention to do me personal injury, though
there is no question in my mind but that they made my trouble
worse. They did not know how terribly they were punishing me. They
saw in my affliction only fun, while I saw in it--only misery.





CHAPTER II

MY FIRST ATTEMPT TO BE CURED


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.





CHAPTER III

MY SEARCH CONTINUES


My parents' efforts to have me cured, however, did not cease with
my visit to the medicine man. We were still looking for something
that would bring relief. My teacher, Miss Cora Critchlow, handed
me an advertisement one day, telling me of a man who claimed to be
able to cure stammering by mail. In the hope that I would get some
good from the treatment, my parents sent this mail order man a
large sum of money. In return for this I was furnished with
instructions to do a number of useless things, such as holding
toothpicks between my teeth, talking through my nose, whistling
before I spoke a word, and many other foolish things. It was at
this time that I learned once and for all, the imprudence of
throwing money away on these mail order "cures," so-called, and I
made up my mind to bother no more with this man and his kind.

So far as the mail order instructions were concerned, they were
crude and unscientific--merely a hodge-podge of pseudo-technical
phraseology and crass ignorance--a meaningless jargon scarcely
intelligible to the most highly educated, and practically
impossible of interpretation by the average stammerer who was
supposed to follow the course. Even after I had, by persistent
effort, interpreted the instructions and followed them closely for
many months, there was not a sign of the slightest relief from my
trouble. It was evident to me even then that I could never cure
myself by following a mail cure.

Today, after twenty-eight years of experience in the cure of
stammering, I can say with full authority, that stammering cannot
be successfully treated by mail. The very nature of the
difficulty, as well as the method of treatment, make it impossible
to put the instructions into print or to have the stammerer follow
out the method from a printed sheet.

As I approached manhood, my impediment began to get worse. My
stuttering changed to stammering. Instead of rapidly repeating
syllables or words, I was unable to begin a word. I stood
transfixed, my limbs drawing themselves into all kinds of
unnatural positions. There were violent spasmodic movements of the
head, and contractions of my whole body. The muscles of my throat
would swell, affecting the respiratory organs, and causing a
curious barking sound. When I finally got started, I would utter
the first part of the sentence slowly, gradually increase the
speed, and make a rush toward the end.

At other times, when attempting to speak, my lips would pucker up,
firmly set together, and I would be unable to separate them, until
my breath was exhausted. Then I would gasp for more breath,
struggling with the words I desired to speak, until the veins of
my forehead would swell, my face would become red, and I would
sink back, wholly unable to express myself, and usually being
obliged to resort to writing.

These paroxysms left me extremely nervous and in a seriously
weakened condition. After one of these attacks, the cold
perspiration would break out on my forehead in great beads and I
would sink into the nearest chair, where I would be compelled to
remain until I had regained my strength.

My affliction was taking all my energy, sapping my strength,
deadening my mental faculties, and placing me at a hopeless
disadvantage in every way. I could do nothing that other people
did. I appeared unnatural. I was nervous, irritable, despondent.
This despondency now brought about a peculiar condition. I began
to believe that everyone was more or less an enemy of mine. And
still worse, I came to believe that I was an enemy of myself,
which feeling threw me into despair, the depths of which I do not
wish to recall, even now.

I was not only miserably unhappy myself, I made everyone else
around me unhappy, although I did it, not intentionally, but
because my affliction had caused me to lose control of myself.

In this condition, my nerves were strained to the breaking point
all day long, and many a night I can remember crying myself to
sleep--crying purely to relieve that stored-up nervous tension,
and f ailing off to sleep as a result of exhaustion.

As I said before, there were periods of grace when the trouble
seemed almost to vanish and I would be delighted to believe that
perhaps it was gone forever--happy hope! But it was but a
delusion, a mirage in the distance, a new road to lead me astray.
The affliction always returned, as every stammerer knows--returned
worse than before. All the hopes that I would outgrow my trouble,
were found to be false hopes. For me, there was no such thing as
outgrowing it and I have since discovered that after the age of
six only one-fifth of one per cent. ever outgrow the trouble.

Another thing which I always thought peculiar when I was a
stammerer was the fact that I had practically no difficulty in
talking to animals when I was alone with them. I remember very
well that we had a large bulldog called Jim, which I was very fond
of. I used to believe that Jim understood my troubles better than
any friend I had, unless it was Old Sol, our family driving horse.

Jim used to go with me on all my jaunts--I could talk to him by
the hour and never stammer a word. And Old Sol--well, when
everything seemed to be going against me, I used to go out and
talk things over with Old Sol. Somehow he seemed to understand--he
used to whinney softly and rub his nose against my shoulder as if
to say, "I understand, Bennie, I understand!"

Somehow my father had discovered this peculiarity of my
affliction--that is, my ability to talk to animals or when alone.
Something suggested to him that my stammering could be cured, if I
could be kept by myself for several weeks. With this thought in
mind, he suggested that I go on a hunting and fishing trip in the
wilds of the northwest, taking no guide, no companion of any sort,
so that there would be no necessity of my speaking to any human
being while I was gone.

My father's idea was that if my vocal organs had a complete rest,
I would be restored to perfect speech. As I afterwards proved to
my own satisfaction by actual trial, this idea was entirely wrong.
You can not hope to restore the proper action of your vocal organs
by ceasing to use them. The proper functioning of any bodily organ
is the result, not of ceasing to use it at all, but rather of
using it correctly.

This can be very easily proved to the satisfaction of any one.
Take the case of the small boy who boasts of his muscle. He is
conscious of an increasing strength in the muscles of his arm not
because he has failed to use these muscles but because he has used
them continually, causing a faster-than-ordinary development.

You can readily imagine that I looked forward to my "vacation"
with keen anticipation, for I had never been up in the northwest
and I was full of stories I had read and ideas I had formed of its
wonders.

The trip, lasting two weeks, did me scarcely any good at all. The
most I can say for it is that it quieted my nerves and put me in
somewhat better physical condition, which a couple of weeks in the
outdoor country would do for any growing boy.

But this trip did not cure my stammering, nor did it tend to
alleviate the intensity of the trouble in the least, save through
a lessened nervous state for a few days. Today, after twenty-eight
years' experience, I know that it would be just as sensible to say
that a wagon stuck in the soft mud would get out by "resting"
there as it is to say that stammering can be eradicated by
allowing the vocal organs to rest through disuse.

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