AIDS TO STAMMERERS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18635, 2 August 1930, Page 13

AIDS TO STAMMERERS.

Stammering has been well described as “an affliction numbered among the world’s sorrows, yet real and wearisome and constant, embittering the cup of life.” Sufferers in the past have laboured under the disadvantage that the gravity as well as the real nature of their complaint was not truly estimated. When this defect of speech was taken seriously it was misunderstood in the past, and consequently incorrectly treated. There was, however, much difference of opinion regarding who was the proper kind of person to undertake the treatment of stammering, and since medical men would not, and some teachers could, not, many charlatans who professed cures treated large numbers of patients. In most instances these cures were partial if not complete failures, and the unhappy patients lost their money, but not their stammer. If stammering has been allowed to go on to adult years it is generally incurable. Of course, the grown-up person who stammers for the first time owing to some shock or emotion is in a different category. He can be cured. But stammering usually starts in childhood, and must be cured in childhood if it is to be cured at all. An essential element in the treatment is not to direct the child's attention to his speech at all or in any , way to encourage him to think that he ! differs from or is inferior to other children. Stammering is a mental phenomenon. It is a subtle form of emotional reaction. It is only by a proper understanding of those condition and of the means by which their occurrence can be prevented that stammerin gis cured.