Stammering, Its Cause and Cure

Part 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

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

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.

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