STAMMERING HABIT

Hokitika Guardian, 21 November 1932, Page 7

STAMMERING HABIT

MORE COMMON IN BOYS

TEE TOTALIS M’S ORIGIN

LONDON, November 4

In a recent case at tilie Southend Police Court a mother lamented that her son’s life had been ruined 'by a stammer. She told the Bench that In vvae an intelligent and clover scholar, regularly at the top of his class at school. Now ho was unable to get work.|, He ,had just been excluded from becoming a drummer-boy in the Army, she said, because he stammered.

It has been calculated that three times as many boys as girls suffer in this- way and for every 50 men who stammer in the country there is °nly one woman. Experts have also found it easier to cure girls, though they more often grow out of it.

•Stammering is often hereditary, but it is frequently caused by ill-health, fatigue, worry, excitement, anger—or incorrect breathing. But a stammerer can usually sing very well. The medical profession call s it “pselliismus” and declares that there are eight (variations. Lisping is one of them. And there are fewer girls \dho lisp than boys. It was a stammering man who added a well-known word to the English language. Its centenary will <be celebrated in (September. At Preston in 1832 “Dlc«y” Turner, a reformed drunkard, was addressing a street audience in his impetuous style. In one of his fervid speeches, in which h e was attempting to show how far- superior entire abstinence was to the so-called “moderation” system, he stammered at “T —T—Total abstinence.”. The" crowd took it up and instituted “teetotalism.”