FURTHER FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO BE CURED
The next summer I decided to visit
eastern institutions for the cure of stammering and
determine if these could do any more for me than had
already been done-which as the reader has seen, was
practically nothing. I bought a ticket for Philadelphia,
where I remained for some time, and where I gained
more information of value than in all of my previous
efforts combined.
I found in the Quaker City an old
man who had made speech defects almost a life study.
He knew more about the true principles of speech and
the underlying fundamentals in the production of voice
than all of the rest put together. He taught
me these things, and gave me a solid foundation on
which to build. True, he did not cure my stammering.
But that was not because he failed to understand its
cause, but merely because he had not worked out the
correct method of removing the cause.
It was this man who first brought
home to me the fact that principles of speech are
constant, that they never change and that every person
who talks normally follows out the same principles
of speech, while every person who stutters or stammers
violates these principles of speech. That is
the basis of sound procedure for the cure of stammering
and I must acknowledge my indebtedness to this sincere
old gentleman who did so much for me in the way of
knowledge, even though he did but little for me in
the way of results.
After leaving Philadelphia, I visited
Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, New York, Boston
and other eastern cities, searching for a cure, but
did not find it. I was benefited very little.
These experiences, however, all possessed a certain
value, although I did not know it at the time.
They taught me the things which would not work and
by a simple process of elimination I later found the
things which would.
Finally, however, having become disgusted
with my eastern trip, I bought a ticket for home and
boarded the train more nearly convinced than ever
that I had an incurable case of stammering.
Some time after trying my experiment
with the eastern schools, I saw the advertisement
of a professor from Chicago saying that he would be
at Fort Wayne, Indiana, (which was 40 miles from my
home), for a week.
He was there. So was I. But to
my sorrow. I paid him twenty dollars for which
he taught me a few simple breathing and vocal exercises,
most of which I already knew by heart, having been
drilled in them time and again. This fellow was
like so many others who claimed to cure stammering he
was in the business just because there were stammerers
to cure, and not because he knew anything about it.
He treated the effects of the trouble and did not
attempt to remove the cause. The fact of the
matter is, I doubt whether he knew anything about the
cause.
Then one Sunday while reading a Cincinnati
Sunday newspaper, I ran across an advertisement of
a School of Elocution, in which was the statement,
“Stammering Positively Cured!” Whenever
I saw a sign “Vocal Culture” I became
interested, so I clipped the advertisement, corresponded
with the school and not many Sundays later, being able
to secure excursion rates to Cincinnati, I made the
trip and prepared to begin my work.
The cost of the course was only fifty
dollars and I thought I would be getting cured mighty
cheap if I succeeded. So I gave this school a
“whirl” with the idea of going hack home
in a short time cured to the surprise of
my family and friends. But I was doomed to disappointment.
I took the twenty lessons, but went home stammering
as badly as ever. You can imagine how I felt
as the Big Four train whistled at the Wabash river
just before pulling into the Wabash station, where
I was to get off.
Here was another failure that could
be checked up against the instructor who knew nothing
whatever about the cause of stammering. The whole
idea of the course was to cultivate voice and make
me an orator. That was very fine and would, no
doubt, have done me a great deal of good, but it was
of no use to try to cultivate a fine voice until I
could use that voice in the normal way. The finest
voice in the world is of no use if you stammer, and
cannot use it. The school of elocution went the
same way as all the rest it was a total
failure so far as curing my stammering was concerned.
By this time, my effort to be cured
of stammering had become a habit, just as eating and
sleeping are habits. I was determined to be cured.
I made up my mind I would never give up. True,
I often said to myself, “I may never be cured,”
but in the same breath I resolved that if I was not,
it could never be said that it was because I was a
“quitter.”
My next experiment was with a man
who claimed he could cure my stammering in one hour.
Think of it. Here I had been, spending weeks
and months trying out just one way of cure and
here was a man who could do the whole job in
one hour. Wonderful power he must possess,
I thought. Of course, I did not believe he could
do it. I could not believe it. It was
not believable. But nevertheless, in my effort
to be cured, I had resolved to leave no stone unturned.
I made up my mind that the only way to be sure that
I was not missing the successful method was to try
them all.
So I put myself under this man’s
hand. He was a hypnotist. He felt able to
restore speech with a hypnotic sleep and the proper
hypnotic suggestion while I was in the trance.
But like all the fake fol-de-rol with
which I had come in contact, he did not even make an
impression.
I will say in behalf of this hypnotic
stammer doctor, however, that he was following distinguished
precedent in attempting to cure stammering by hypnotism.
German professors in particular have been especially
zealous in following out this line of endeavor and
many of them have written volumes on the subject only
to end up with the conclusion (in their own minds,
at least) that it is a failure. Hypnotism may
be said to be a condition where the will of the subject
is entirely dormant and his every act and thought
controlled by the mind of the hypnotist. I do
not know, not having been conscious at the time, but
it is not improbable that while in the hypnotic state,
I was able to talk without stammering, since my words
were directed by the mind of the professor, and not
my own mind. But inasmuch as I couldn’t
have the professor carried around with me through
the rest of my lifetime in order to use his mind,
the treatment could not benefit me.
I 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.