Stammering : its treatment / by B. Beasley.

  • Beasley, Benjamin.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Stammering : its treatment / by B. Beasley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    affliction could take such a terrible hold upon anyone, or result in such fearful violence to the nervous system, or suchdreadful mental depressionas I have often witnessed. It is no exaggeration to say that it were better to be dumb entirely, than to suffer the dread, mortification, and disappointment which is the constant lot of the stam- merer. The dumb are never subjected to ridicule, or the thoughtless and sometimes cruel impatience with which the stammerer often finds himself treated. Those who only occasionally listen to imperfect utterance can have no idea of the misery and agony that stammerers feel in their wretched attempts to give utter- ance to their thoughts. What can be more galling to a highly intelligent young man, of refined culture and extensive knowledge, than to find himself unable to enter into conversation, without causing pain both to himself and to those who listen to him ! For nothing is more embarrassing, or gives more pain, than to witness the spasmodic contortions and painful efforts of a stammerer. Besides, should he have to make his way in the world, what occupation can he follow? He is debarred from all the professions requiring fluency of speech, and has to make choice of some calling for which he is possibly un- suited, and for which he has no taste. Thus his prospects are blighted, and he who might have been of use to the community, and an ornament to a profession, finds himself in a few years a sensitively-morbid, melancholy, disappointed, and poor man. What can parents be thinking of, to be so apathetic in the matter as they sometimes are ? Could they but see the letters which come into my hands, they would certainly be roused to a sense of their duty, and do all in their power to obtain relief for their stammering son or daughter. It is not my intention to be sensational, by dilating on the subject of the sufferings of stammerers, although I could do so without drawing on my imagination. The facts would be quite sufficient of themselves, and would require no colouring to make the picture a forcible one. But this I
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