Stammering, or STUTTERING, is an infirmity of speech, the result of failure in co-ordinate action of certain muscles and their appropriate nerves. It is analogous to some kinds of lameness; to cramp or spasm, or partial paralysis of the arms, wrists, hands, and fingers, occasionally suffered by violinists, pianists, and swordsmen; to the scrivener's palsy, or writer's cramp, of men who write much. For speech—like writing, fencing, fingering a musical instrument, and walking—is a muscular act involving the co-ordinate action of many nerves and muscles.
The words stammering and stuttering practically denote the same infirmity. Any distinction that may have come to be established in the usage of them respectively would seem to be that stuttering—an onomatopœic word—is now limited more or less to the futile repetition of sounds, while stammering (akin to 'stamp,' 'stump,' 'step,' 'stop') covers the whole defect, the hesitation, glide, stop, holding on to the sound as well as repeating it. With defective articulation due to malformation—cleft palate, high-roofed mouth, disproportionate tongue and tonsils; or due to affectation and bad habit—interjection of meaningless sounds, lisping, burring, and other such imperfections of speech, we have nothing further to do in this article, beyond remarking that a fault of habit may be entirely cured, a faulty formation can only be mended, its irksomeness alleviated.
Since speech at a high degree of excellence is a fruit of advanced civilisation, it is not startling to be told that stammering does not prevail among Negroes in Africa and North American Indians. But when it is proved to be pretty wide-spread in Prussia, Great Britain and its colonies, and the United States of America, and uncommon in Italy and Spain, the question suggests itself whether languages of Teutonic origin are not more apt to generate stammering than languages of Latin origin. A much larger proportion of males stammer than of females.
Stammering, the chief of the imperfections of speech, may be hereditary, and it may be acquired by imitation. Like yawning, it is infectious. It may be the abiding result of mental strain or shock. Fever may bring it on, epilepsy, hysteria, any nervous affection, temporary failure of health, any excitement, soreness of the mouth. It rarely shows itself earlier than at four or five years of age. It usually begins in youth, but may be produced at any later age. It used to be ascribed exclusively to the organ of articulation, the mouth; to faulty setting of the teeth or the jaws, to the largeness and thickness of the tongue, its weakness of movement, its excessive vigour. The cause indicates the cure. A wedge was cut out of the tongue, lengthways, to make a path for the current of air. The root of the tongue was cut to break its excessive vigour. The tongue was thought to lie too flat on the bottom of the mouth; a plug was inserted to raise it, Demosthenes and the pebbles being referred to. It was one of the secret cures to tell the stammerer to keep the tip of his tongue on the roof of his mouth. An improvement on this was to keep the whole breadth of the tongue lying on the palate. When, by-and-by, the breathing began to be taken into account, stammering was explained exclusively by reference to the organ of respiration, and the cure was breathing exercises which were kept secret. The latest step in the research for the cause and cure of stammering has been to take full account of the vocal chords or cushions and the vocal clink.
Stammering occurs in the mouth, the organ of articulation. Its proximate cause is always in the larynx, the organ of voice. Sometimes the lungs, the organ of breathing, complicate the uncertainty and unsteadiness of the vocal chords and the vocal clink in the larynx. A current of air, variously shaped by the mouth as a whole, is what we call a vowel. A stammer on a vowel can only take place in the vocal clink, rima glottidis. The sounds called consonants are produced by closures, more or less firm, of contents of the mouth. Thus, b, p, m, w, by the closure of the two lips; f, v, of the lower lip and upper teeth; g soft and sh, of the teeth; l and th, tongue and upper teeth; t, d, n, s, z, y, tip of the tongue and fore gum; g hard and k, back edges of the tongue and back gum. Stammering may occur at any of these six closures. It is, perhaps, most apt to occur at the labials b, p, the dentals d, t, the gutturals g hard, k, because for these the closure is firmest. The stammerer has no difficulty in setting lips, teeth, tongue, and gums against each other as required. His difficulty is to relieve the closure, to get at the vowel which is to follow the consonant. The tongue, for example, will not part with the teeth, seems to cling spasmodically to them. Why? Because the current of air, the vowel, does not come at the proper instant through the vocal clink to relieve it. In this way the three observable modes of stammering are explained. If the vocal clink does not open soon enough there is a stop stammer; if it flutters, there is a stutter; if it opens too soon, there is a glide stammer. But, further, the lungs expand and contract by nervous and muscular energy; and, besides, the muscular and nervous machinery of the breastbone, ribs, midriff, and upper abdomen are all concerned in that expansion and contraction. These complicated and delicate bellows which supply air under pressure to the organ of voice may be defective, out of order, misused. Their working is to be closely observed in the case of each stammerer. Stammerers, as a rule, breathe badly. They constantly try to speak when their lungs are empty.
Stammering can be cured. It often disappears gradually without effort at cure. Improvement generally takes place as age advances. In some cases resolute endeavour is demanded. A waving motion of the arms, time kept to a baton, were favoured as cures at one time. They were on the lines of the musical methods of cure—intoning, chanting, singing—which were based on the fact that most stammerers can sing. The doctrine of this article suggests as instructions for cure: Regulate the breath. Work for an habitual use of the chest voice—i.e. for deeper, steadier vibration of the vocal chords—because people generally stammer in a head voice. Take exercise, in a chest voice, on the sounds (seldom vowels) at which a stumble is apt to be made.