Stammering, Its Cause and Cure. Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
next got in touch with an honest-looking old man with a beard like one of the prophets, who assured me with a great deal of professional dignity, that stammering was a mere trifle for a magnetic healer like himself and that he could cure it entirely in ten treatments. So I planked down the specified amount for ten treatments, and went to him regularly three times a week for almost a month, when he explained to me, again with a plenitude of professionalism, that my case was a very peculiar one and that it would require ten more treatments. But I could not figure out how, if ten treatments had done me no good, ten more would do any better. So I declined to try his methods any further. Once again I said to myself, "Well, this has failed, too—I wonder what next?"
The next happened to be electrical treatments. When I visited the electrical treatment specialist, he explained to me in a very effective manner just how (according to his views) stammering was caused by certain contractions of the muscles of the vocal organs, etc., and told me that his treatment surely was the thing to eliminate this contraction and leave my speech entirely free from stammering. I knew something about my stammering then, but not a great deal—consequently his explanation sounded plausible to me and appealed to me as being very sensible and so I decided to give it a trial. I was glad after it was over that I had received no bad effects—that was ALL the cause I had to be glad, for he had not changed my stammering one iota, nor had he changed my speech in any way to make it easier for me to talk. Thus, had I found another one of the things that will not work and chalked up another failure against my attempts to be cured of stammering.
By this time, the reader may well wonder why I was not discouraged in my efforts to be cured. Well, who will say that I was not? I believe I was—as far as it was possible for me to be discouraged at that time. But despite all my failures, I had made up my mind never to give up until I was cured of stammering. I set myself doggedly to the task of ridding myself of an impediment that I knew would always hold me down and prevent any measure of success. I stayed with this task. I never gave up. I kept this one thing always hi mind. It was a life job with me if necessary—and I was not a "quitter." So failures and discouragements simply steeled me to more intense endeavors to be cured. And while these endeavors cost my parents many hundreds of dollars and cost me many years of time, still, I feel today that they were worth while—not worth while enough to go through again, or worth while enough to recommend to any one else—but at least not a total loss to me.
CHAPTER VI
I REFUSE TO BE DISCOURAGED
After I had tried the electric treatment and found it wanting, I heard of a clairvoyant who could, by looking at a person, tell his name, age, occupation, place of residence, etc., and could cure all diseases and afflictions including stammering. So I thought I would give him a trial. He claimed to work through a "greater power"—whatever that was—and so I paid him his fee to see the "greater power" work—and to be cured of stammering, as per promise. But there was nothing doing in the line of a cure—all I got in trying to be cured, was another chapter added to my book of experience.
Following this experience, I tried an osteopath, whose methods, however good they might have been, affected merely the physical organs and could not hope to reach the real cause of my trouble. I do not doubt that this man was entirely sincere in explaining his own science to me in a way that led me to build up hopes of relief from that method. He simply did not understand stammering and its causes and was therefore not prepared to treat it.
I was told of another doctor who claimed to be able to cure stammering. When I called to see him, he had me wait in his reception room for nearly two hours, for the purpose, I presume, of giving me the impression that he was a very busy man. Then he called me into his private consultation room, where he apparently had all of the modern and up-to-date surgical instruments. He put me through a thorough examination, after which he said that the only thing to cure me was a surgical operation to have my tonsils removed. I was not willing to consent to the use of the knife, so therefore the operation was never performed.
Since that time, however, the practice of operating on children especially for the removal of adenoids and tonsils has become very popular and quite frequently this is the remedy prescribed for various and sundry ailments of childhood. In no case must a parent expect to eradicate stuttering or stammering by the removal of the tonsils. The operation, beneficial as it may be in other ways, does not prevent the child from stammering—for the operation does not remove the cause of the stammering—that cause is mental, not physical.
CHAPTER VII
THE BENEFIT OF MANY FAILURES
I had now tried upwards of fifteen different methods for the cure of my stammering. I had tried the physician; the surgeon; the elocution teacher; the hypnotic specialist; the osteopath; a clairvoyant; a mail-order scheme; the world's greatest speech specialist—so-called, and several other things. My parents had spent hundreds of dollars of money trying to have me cured. They had spared no effort, stopped at no cost. And yet I now stammered worse than I had ever stammered before. Everything I had tried had been a worthless failure. Nothing had been of the least permanent good to me. My money was gone, months of time had been wasted and I now began to wonder if I had not been very foolish indeed, in going to first one man and then another, trying to be cured. "Wouldn't it have been better," I asked, "if I had resigned myself to a life as a stammerer and let it go at that?"
My father before me stammered. So did my grandfather and no less than fourteen of my blood relations. My affliction was inherited and therefore supposedly incurable. At least so I was told by honest physicians and other scientific observers who believed what they said and who had no desire to make any personal gain by trafficking in my infirmity. These men told me frankly that their skill and knowledge held out no hope for me and advised me from the very beginning to save my money and avoid the pitfalls of the many who would profess to be able to cure me.
But I had disregarded this honest advice, sincerely given, had spent my money and my time—and what had I gotten? Would I not have been better off if I had listened to the advice and stayed at home? Everything seemed to answer "Yes," but down in my heart I felt that things were better as they were. Certainly some good must come of all this effort—surely it could not all be wasted.
"But yet," I argued with myself, "what good can come of it?" Stammering was fast ruining my life. It had already taken the joy out of my childhood and had made school a task almost too heavy to be undertaken. It had marked my youth with a somber melancholy, and now that youth was slipping away from me with no hope that the future held anything better for me than the past. Something had to be done. I was overpowered by that thought—something had to be done. It had to be done at once. I had come to the turning point in my life. Like Hamlet, I found myself repeating over and over again,
"To be or not to be,
That is the question."
Was I discouraged? No, I will not admit that I was discouraged, but I was pretty nearly resigned to a life without fluent speech, nearly convinced that future efforts to find a cure for stammering would be fruitless and bring no better results.
It was about this time that I stepped into the office of my cousin, then a successful lawyer and district attorney of his city, later the first vice-president of one of the great American railroads with headquarters in New York, and now retired. He was one of those men in whose vocabulary there is no such word as "fail."